Bill Bryson - A Short History Of Nearly Everything

[Dinner]

I thought it was familiar.

[Richelieu]

[Dinner]

Of course it is always possible I was thinking about the same video clip posted in another forum. These clips get linked to so often.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Oerdin


I'd believe it. Remember the undersea pipe which the crab got sucked through?

Completely different situation. A small crack in a large pipe will not get clogged. A small pipe will.

[Carolus Rex]

Read it and liked it!

About a diver being sucked up etc... Have you guys seen a program called "Mythbusters"? They pretty much destroyed it...

Carolus

[KrazyHorse]

Just got to that section in the book. Bryson's even more full of **** than I thought. The video of the crab is claimed to be at ~3000 PSI, whereas Bryson claims divers were sucked up in diving suits connected to the surface via air tubes, which certainly never got to a depth of greater than 100 m...which would only get you to ~140 PSI. That pressure differential might just be enough to puncture your skin and suck some of your blood up into the hose. Certainly it wouldn't take any significant amount of your tissue up.

[KrazyHorse]

Also, any pressure failure at the top would collapse the rubber hose which was supposed to suck the diver up.

That story falls apart on so many levels that it's not even close to credible.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Just got to that section in the book. Bryson's even more full of **** than I thought. The video of the crab is claimed to be at ~3000 PSI, whereas Bryson claims divers were sucked up in diving suits connected to the surface via air tubes, which certainly never got to a depth of greater than 100 m...which would only get you to ~140 PSI. That pressure differential might just be enough to puncture your skin and suck some of your blood up into the hose.

And kill you, of course. Ever been diving?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I've just been reading up on this, and I've read references to commercial divers using surface-supplied air to go below 1000 feet. That would push the pressure up to something approaching 500 PSI.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp


And kill you, of course. Ever been diving?

Of course it would kill you. It wouldn't, however "[suck you] up into the helmet and hosepipe" in such a manner that "all that [would be] left in the suit [would be your] bones and some rags of flesh"

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
I've just been reading up on this, and I've read references to commercial divers using surface-supplied air to go below 1000 feet. That would push the pressure up to something approaching 500 PSI.

In 1947? This is when the quote originates from

[KrazyHorse]

Given the source of the quote I also have reason to doubt its accuracy. JBS Haldane sounds like a right little ******* who took entirely too much pleasure in the misfortunes of others. I can see him having been either too credulous or too inventive when it came to such matters.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

http://home.earthlink.net/~nbrass1/markv.htm

In the early days of diving, no valves were used on the helmet, and some horrible accidents occurred. If the diver's air hose were to break at or near the surface, or the pump failed, pressure inside the suit would quickly drop to atmospheric pressure, and the diver would be crushed as his suit collapsed, squeezing his body into the helmet, and even up the air hose, a "massive body squeeze." One of the first modifications to the helmet was the inclusion of a non-return valve in the air inlet, which automatically closed if the air supply failed.

[KrazyHorse]

squeezing his body into the helmet, and even up the air hose

a) Water is virtually incompressible. No reasonable amount of pressure will force an entire human body into the volume of the diving helmet.

b) There's a huge difference between that quote and the Bryson quote of Haldane. In your quote, the diver's body was mashed up so that some of it was contained in the helmet (the helmet was full) a very small amount was sucked into the hosepipe, and the rest was still in the suit proper. Which is what I've been claiming all along.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I can't see how you can reach that conclusion in "b" with 100% certainty based on the qote I posted....