Tanker Crush MiniMyth | MythBusters 

"this is the biggest myth we've ever tested" *calls it a minimyth*

I know we are all disappointed, but there is some railroad worker who is really glad he doesn't ever have to worry about this.

Maybe the Old tank that imploded was thinner or used a different matterial than the newer ones

In the actual episode, after that they dropped a heavy weight on it to damage it. Then it worked.

It's absolutely crucial to remember, the moments of fun we're sharing....took years of their efforts to earn the chance, and weeks of toil.

“Just as they start to think the tank can’t possibly budge.... it doesn’t”

This is a 1 atmosphere difference in pressure... now imagine how violent it would be underwater with 400 atm of difference...

Being a professional Chemical Engineer, I have seen a lot of tanks that designed for withstanding various pressure, and most of them are quite over built, so it is likely they have picked up a tough one that designed to hold negative pressure. But yes, I have also seen imploded tanks myself, it is possible.

The fact that the small canister got compacted was amazing enough for me.

Anyone here because of the titan submersive incident?

RU-vid has a funny sense of recommendations

Some tanks are designed for full vacuum. Some aren’t. If you did the same thing to an older tanker you could well have your implosion.

i'm just here for the top comments of the last 2 weeks

Multiply that by about 20-30 times and that's what happened to oceangate.... Nothing to recover..

The shape of it won’t let it implode, if it had a big dent in the side it might work

1:39 you can see they already tested this look at the can in the background

Here because of tragic lost of the Titan. I can only imagine how scary the first creek was down there. Or it was probably so instant, they didn’t even know it happened. Rip to them🥺

Also I've watched these implode first hand. Not the high pressure tanks like this but insulated tanks on tractor trailers. Most often caused by the unloading process when the driver does not open the vent port and the tank is unloaded by 1000hp high flow punps, no one wants to wait 40 mins to unload a tank when it can be done in 5 mins.

Titan brought me here🥺

I would imagine that they're built in such a way to prevent this very thing from happening

"The valve is closed, I am de-assing the area."

Gonna use one of these for a submarine.

The problem is the use of a modern tank, designed to prevent this from happening. If it were an older tank, closer to the age of the myth itself, I suspect very different results.

Anybody here to understand how this is similar to the Titan sub?

If anything, this makes me feel all the safer watching these things roll down the tracks.

This reminds me of a military myth told to me by a veteran of Korea. The story goes that when old Vickers and Maxim guns ran low on water in the barrel jacket soldiers would pour cold water on them to prevent getting burned when refilling the jacket. Apparently guns would sometimes implode. The squaddie I was talking to thought it a load of nonsense but perhaps some older, battered jackets could have deformed. The bigger question is why waste the water?

Possibly my favorite line in all of Mythbusters... Im de-assing the area!

Yes, maybe in a perfect tanker car. But each flaw and ding will become a breaking point, even for a car that's reinforced for negative pressure.

Many of the same features (shape) that are needed to keep it from exploding, also help to resist implosion. typical fair weather atmospheric pressures are 28-32InHg. If they had more fully expelled the air by replacing it with steam, they would have gotten closer to the local atmospheric pressure difference. However, I presume they designed the tankers to be able to withstand (or vent to prevent) the crushing forces of very cold weather condensation of petroleum distillates; no surprise here on second thought.

It is just the engineers who designed the tanker car, designed it too well for the Myth Busters..

A flaw could be that the atmospheric temperature was not cold enough. As in standard raining conditions, causing the whole tanker to be cooled at a more rapid, uniform pace than with having water hit from what looks like half. In all, half the tanker wasn't exposed to a complete atmospheric temperature.

RIP MythBusters - you will be missed

Here because of the submarine

"Valve is closed, I am de-assing the area."

Maybe if it was done in a colder place with much more water involved in cooling. If it was enough rain to stop people from working it was probably pouring rain

Tanker trucks have warning labels near the dump valves about vent the top to prevent the tank from crushing.

I miss this show

All that build up for nothing...

"you wouldn't break!" Seems like great design to me!

Too bad the Titan wasn't this strong.

I'm here because submarine implosion

The reason this didn't work is that the atmosphere can, at most, exert 14 psi on the outside of the tanker car. The steel can withstand far more pressure than that.

My all time FAV segment and watching Adam having with it makes more worthwhile 😎👍

RU-vid's algorithm must think I just love implosions, after the Titan... and they are right

(3:15) "and I am De-Assing the area" all those episodes ago

I wish that Discovery would release all the Mythbuster episodes that are not currently out on a new set of DVDs. Ultimate Mythbuster, Mythbuster vs Jaws, Car Drop, Boarding a Plane, etc etc.

Hi fellow titan sub ppl 👋

maybe because in the myth RAIN was used: aka cooled down in an uniform from ALL sides and not just a single water stream ...

Im in class right now watching this haha great job guys! Plus thanks for teaching us science and making it fun!! :))

Wow. I wanted them to go overkill, light a fire under it, seal it remotely and use the “rain” to put the fire out

I love the Loram MOW used in the video. IRP the train fan approves.

Titan submersible sub

Miss this show... RIP Grant.

Best ad for this tank producer.

A few things. Shape caused it to not implode, thickness of material, also the day seemed to be pretty warm the day could have been colder making the rain colder which would give a higher temp differential. I believe this could work they were just in ideal circumstances for it not to work

“I am de-assing the area!” Screaming

This is one myth I still think about from time to time. I wonder what would have happened in the winter, where you still have some hot days in that region and yet it still freezes at night. And yes they have Freezing Rain there. A couple degrees colder may have made a big difference with this myth.

The structural integrity of the tank was too great for the pressure to crush itself. It was built too well. Later, they do it again and compromise the structural integrity by putting a significant indentation that gives it a head start and sure enough it does crush itself beyond use like a soda can.

When the vacuum or negative pressure is formed inside ,there is high pressure outside the tank(ie atmospheric pressure= 14psi)so atmosphere is applying a pressure of 14psi on the walls of the tank which is made of frickin thick pieces of metal so 14psi of pressure is inadequate to crush a 1000 pound tank! C'mon myth busters y'all knew that

Wonder why the tanker was not built with carbon fiber

Gotta love that LOST reference at the end!

I don’t know what they explained in the full episode, but by regulation, rank cars, rail and truck, must have a vacuum relief valve that will let air in if pressure goes too far negative. I have actually seen a tanker be sucked in (truck tanker) during unloading operations because the tank trailer was not vented and the negative pressure was too great.

this happened at a factory i was working at, the guy was pumping out glycol from a chemical tanker but had not opened the ventilation valve, so the tank was practically sealed as he pumped out the liquid., well, that made the tanker implode after it got near empty. noone was hurt, BUT if the guy had been on top of it when it imploded it bent in such a way it would have flung the worker up in the air. that worker got fired.

I just love these guys. And I must say that Mythbusters Jr. gave me a whole new appreciation for the guy with the glasses. Great work, guys 👍👍👍👍

They did achieve an implosion on another tank car.

If memory serves me correctly, they had to create a dent in the tanker in order to weaken the structural integrity. When they replicated the parameters of the experiment again, the tanker imploded as the myth suggested. However, the myth was still considered busted.

I've sawn two imploded railway tankercars at Burgo Paper Plant in Virton, Belgium. During unloading of heavy crude oil, they used also steam to heat it up, getting the oil fluid. The tankercars looked like a crushed cola-can.....

There is a lot of knowledge on cylindrical containers with external pressure from oceanographic work. The roundness of the tank is really important as the shape is unstable if out of round for external pressures (think flattening a straw.) The domed endcaps are also crucial as these would otherwise fail early. The choice of steel and weld quality obviously also matters. BTW for those saying the steam test was less meant less force than pumping on the tank tthey report the he pressure was 27" of mercury which is about 13psi which is pretty much 1 atmosphere (~14psi) - a pump would be no different in force, since the force comes from the air pressure outside which is fixed. Presumably tankers that did collapse where of a different structure.

loved that “mind power” ;-)

It's not cold enough outside for this to work. It wasn't just raining, it was winter weather. Enough to see your breath.

It can withstand 0.9 atm. Pretty good for a cylinder(ish thing)

It all depends on the shape off the container the rectangle had more stress points (curves and welds) while the cylinder was round with less stress points

Ay i live in boardman Oregon 😂😂 even if it's a small town I feel honor setting foot on the train tracks were they did there experiment 🙏

Here because of titan sub

It's important to note that it isn't really a vacuum that sucks things to shrink from the inside. The atmosphere, the same one pushing on us at all times, crushes them from the outside. Vacuum seals? The atmosphere pushing the packaging onto the stored item. I don't know if it's an accurate description, but atmospheric pressure seems to be the equivalent of placing a ten ton (metric) object on every square meter surface. Including you.

Some tankers are rated for pressure, some for vacuum, some for both. I wonder what the car they used was rated for

The Oceangate CEO didn't watch Mythbuster or listened to James Cameron, RIP to all the passengers of Titan.

It’s been a wild ride.

0:34 sounds like he’s constipated

I used to drive a fuel oil tanker one time in snow & ice storm I was pumping off a load of six oil the vents in the hatch on the top of the tank got clogged with frozen ice & snow I sucked in the steel tank I mean really sucked it in this was about 1989 The tank held 6500 gallons after that it only held 5200 gallons till it was repaired.

Question on this. But wouldnt it be more likely to implode in a cold weather area doing this? Cali heat would keep it someone heated on the outside so its less likely to implode.

That's incredible, just not in the loud way we wanted. Still, a testament to the strength of these cars.

Cool!

I bet if they cooled it further than 100F they woulda gotten the implosion. Cool it down to, say, 60. I mean, when it rains, it's not usually 100F in the rain, at least not around here.

was the ideal gas law used, or just Charles law? I'm not sure if the pressure differential was the key or the temp. change.

They later on went to put dents in it to simulate a car that gets beat up ( normal for a teain car) Once it had dents in it the car did collapse.

Implosions on real card tankers have definitely happened. They used one that was able to withstand it because it was built that way but many in the past are not

This happens more often than ppl think. Not only 2 train cars but also semi tankers. If u dont activate the pressure differential valve they will implode. And as many other have already said these tanks get beat up. Dents, warping, scratches. All these weaken the integrity of the tank making them more likely to fail

What a terrible way to die...

Sine when was sream at atmospheric pressure at 300 degrees ?

They did eventually get it to implode but they had to dent it first.

Wow, we studied things like that from 8th grade into college. The collapsing can on the hot plate was an 8th grade experiment. A course in structural engineering explains the rest. Consider the simple soda can. If it is undamaged (no dents at all) You can (after emptying it of soda) set it on the floor (upright) and stand on it (unless you weigh like over 200+ lbs). That thin thin wall in circular form spread the stress of the weight perfectly uniformly around the structure. *As long as there is NO point for which the stress to concentrate* One small dent in the side and it will collapse as soon as you put weight on it. Cause that flaw does not allow the stress to be uniform, it builds rapidly at the point of uneven geometry, and quickly overwhelms the material. Indeed if that tanker had a dent it would have collapsed. As others have long since pointed out that tanker cars over time get damaged and pick up collections of dents. The thick metal allows them to still withstand a good amount of pressure (positive or negative) but those will no longer be able to take an extreme pressure difference anymore.

Where you get all the money form? And stuff!

The pressure inside the can is low, not negative. The pressure differential from interior to exterior is negative

"Last season", welcome back -regards, science channel

They called this myth busted, but it absolutely has happened in real life. These tank cars are used in much colder climates and often are beat up which amplify the negative pressure affects

0:36. No it doesn't, the external air pressure does.

It is possible but the tank is thick and designed to take the pressure.You have a modern tank.If you fill a canister a metal canister with hot water and put it in a pool so that every side of the canister gets covered in cold water the canister would be crushed.So epic fail

I’m shocked that didn’t work. I’ve seen milk tankers get imploded in similar situations

De-assing the Area.... I'm going to use that