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  • So a while back I did an imploding drum experiment, but at the time, I didn't have a very good high speed camera.

  • And so I used something called optical flow to interplay between the frames and basically just tries to add in what must have happened.

  • But since it doesn't actually capture what happened, you can see the deck to warps the frame and looks really weird and unrealistic.

  • So I've come down to the Cuesta con Science center in camera and I'm gonna shoot this again with their amazing high speed 1200 frames per second.

  • Okay, we've got steam billowing out of the drum, so it's totally full of water vapor at the moment.

  • Now I'm gonna take it off the heating element.

  • Now we're gonna cool down all that water in there, which is gonna cause it to condense as it condenses, is gonna create a vacuum in there, which hopefully will get it to implode.

  • Whoa!

  • Oh, yeah.

  • Ah, a lot of people think this experiment is just about showing the power of the atmosphere, but I think there's a more important consequence.

  • It explains why a power station, for example, you need to cool the steam as it comes out of the exit.

  • To turn over a turbine, you have to get very hot steam, and everyone appreciates.

  • The steam needs to be incredibly hot as hard as you can make it.

  • But on the other side of the turbine, you need to use a condenser to cool down that steam.

  • And this is why.

  • Because that creates this big suction.

  • So not only do you heat up the steam so it pushes over the turbine, you also need to cool it down with God through the turbine.

  • So you have a big change in energy, and that is what turns a turbine over.

  • Now, of course, suction is just the word we use when a fluid flows from an area of higher pressure into an area of lower pressure, which you'd know if you've seen the sauces video on the space straw.

  • The lowest pressure you can get in a gas is zero, a perfect vacuum, but you can actually get negative pressures if the fluid is a liquid and it's inside a tree.

  • Now that's really suction, so click on the link in the description.

  • If you want to learn more so that 20 leader drum was good, But perhaps this 200 leader drum will be better.

  • But the question is, will it implode?

  • I want you to place your bets now we have to gas heaters.

  • You can see keeping up this drum.

  • It's, uh, pretty hot.

  • We have a bit of steam coming out the top, as you can see there in a moment, we're gonna pull it off these gas burners, seal it up and start cooling it down with water.

  • The water vapor inside will condense, and we will see if the atmosphere can crush it.

  • I'm cautiously optimistic.

  • Round objects are incredibly strong under compression, as destined showed us with Prince Rupert's drop.

  • But if you create just a little ding in a round object, it should significantly weaken the structure.

  • And that's what the hammer is for.

  • Well, that's how it should work in theory, anyway.

  • Underwhelming science.

  • The implosion happens so fast in just 25 thousands of a second that the water on the left hand side of the drum can't keep up.

  • Have a look.

  • Ah, human blink takes about 100 milliseconds.

  • That's four times the time it took for the drum to implode, so it's literally blink and you'll miss it.

  • So there we go.

  • We showed that the atmosphere is powerful enough.

  • Do crumple even this very thick, very big drum.

  • When we later measured, we found that the drum had crumpled into a perfect equal lateral prism, which might not surprise you if, unlike by heart, you prefer your maths potatoes with a minimum amount of gravy.

  • You see for a given perimeter the equal lateral triangle and closes the minimum amount of area of any regular polygon.

  • So the drone was optimizing to make the minimum volume in its interior, which is what you'd expect because there's a vacuum in there.

  • Isn't that awesome?

  • That is awesome.

  • Uh huh.

  • That feels good.

  • What?

  • You really warm Now?

  • You may have noticed that the big drum crumpled into an equilateral prism, whereas the smaller drum crumpled into something resembling a hexagon.

  • So the question is, why were they crumple in different ways?

  • I mean, one thing I was thinking was that perhaps they were created in different ways, so maybe they were welded in different points, and that explains the structure that we saw.

  • But I'd like to hear your thoughts.

  • Why do you think we saw these different crumpling patterns?

  • Mean?

  • Obviously, things with three corners are generally quite stable, so that may explain also why it crumpled just thio triangular prism.

  • But I'd like to hear what you have to say, so let me know in the comments.

So a while back I did an imploding drum experiment, but at the time, I didn't have a very good high speed camera.

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