Everyone has heard horror stories about getting sucked out of an airplane window. More accurately, the unlucky passenger is ‘pushed’ out through some tiny aperture, because the internal pressure in the plane has nothing to oppose it.
But the biggest pressure differential you can have in an airplane is 1 atmosphere — from sea level to vacuum. That’s the max.
What if you go the other direction?
This video was taken in 6,000 feet of water, during maintenance on an undersea pipeline. A remote-operated robot is sawing a 3 mm wide slit (that’s only 1/10th of an inch) in the pipeline. The pressure inside the pipeline is 0 psi, while the pressure outside is 2,700 psi, or 1.3 tons per square inch. That’s nearly 184 atmospheres. So when some poor unlucky crab comes along….
Three. Millimeters. Wide. Ain’t physics fun?
Oy! What kind of pipeline is that? Did the crab end up at a power plant somewhere, or in the drinking water supply? Or maybe the phone lines!?
Mmmmmm, crab puree….let me go get some crackers…