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How does a diving bell work? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know fromhouse stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant is with me. Um,
0:16
Speaker 1: which means it's time for stuff you should know. That's right, man,
0:20
Speaker 1: I got all confused right there, you're about to say. Listener,
0:24
Speaker 1: it's a little close for comfort. Our shortest show ever. Yes,
0:28
Speaker 1: how introductions work? How you doing? I'm well, sir, How
0:33
Speaker 1: are you? I'm good. It's a little warm in here
0:36
Speaker 1: today in um, I feel I feel like this is
0:39
Speaker 1: to him, like a room that we're in is always
0:42
Speaker 1: sort of warm and off putting. Well, there's like eighteen
0:46
Speaker 1: NIKEA lamps in here, and I guess it feels like
0:49
Speaker 1: it's warmer than usual. They generate some heat and that's
0:52
Speaker 1: how they power Switzerland Sweden with Sweden Sweden. Yeah, yeah, sorry,
0:59
Speaker 1: sweet is. Yeah, I know people are like good lord Chuck. Yeah,
1:03
Speaker 1: you got a map as a desk bells. Yeah, you
1:08
Speaker 1: have a tan map down to so um Chuck. I
1:12
Speaker 1: want to dive into a subject that I believe you
1:15
Speaker 1: know something about. Okay, it's called diving bells. That's the subject,
1:20
Speaker 1: and I know you know about it because this article
1:23
Speaker 1: that we're basing this off of, is it Chuck Bryant jam, Yeah,
1:27
Speaker 1: I forgot all about this and I got about halfway
1:29
Speaker 1: through it, and I was like that sounds like something
1:31
Speaker 1: I'd say, Oh, really, you didn't realize that you've written it. Nope,
1:35
Speaker 1: totally forgot. And then it wasn't halfway through, but it
1:38
Speaker 1: was probably somewhere in the intro, that silly clever intro,
1:42
Speaker 1: which was really not clever. Oh, I don't know. I
1:45
Speaker 1: feel like I used to start all of my articles
1:47
Speaker 1: like I was writing a middle school term paper. Oh
1:51
Speaker 1: was it the uh where they're talking about how there's
1:53
Speaker 1: not very many images of our early attempts to scuba
1:57
Speaker 1: dive because quote of the lack of availability of underwater
2:02
Speaker 1: filming techniques at the time. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like filler.
2:07
Speaker 1: Very very very very very remember in summer school with
2:11
Speaker 1: Chainsaw and Dave Uh yeah, the Mark Arman movie. Yeah,
2:15
Speaker 1: they had to write like a three word essay or
2:17
Speaker 1: something like that and somebody they admired, and I think
2:20
Speaker 1: it was Toby Hooper and or it was the or
2:25
Speaker 1: a special effects there, but they said like he was
2:27
Speaker 1: very very very very very very very I remember those
2:30
Speaker 1: days counting the words. Yeah, that's not what this is. No,
2:34
Speaker 1: this is a great article on diving bells. It's kind
2:37
Speaker 1: of interesting, you know, the precursor to scuba diving. If
2:39
Speaker 1: any of you folks out there, scuba enthusiasts you have, uh,
2:45
Speaker 1: you know, there's a trail that was blazed many years before,
2:48
Speaker 1: littered with dead bodies and big iron casks. Yeah, not
2:52
Speaker 1: just dead bodies, but crippled bodies too. Like, a lot
2:55
Speaker 1: of bad stuff can happen to you, and a lot
2:57
Speaker 1: of bad stuff did happen to people before we really
3:01
Speaker 1: understood the physics of Yeah, I mean, people still lose
3:05
Speaker 1: their lives obviously in the pursuit of um, just forwarding technology,
3:11
Speaker 1: but um not like they used to people. You're like,
3:14
Speaker 1: we really owe a debt to the people who figured
3:16
Speaker 1: out everything that we have and lost their lives doing it. Well,
3:19
Speaker 1: what's spectacularly amazing to me is that not everyone died
3:24
Speaker 1: trying to use diving bells. And we're talking like years ago. Yeah,
3:29
Speaker 1: it wasn't you know in the early nine right, Yeah, Yeah,
3:32
Speaker 1: Apparently by the twelve hundreds, the concept of diving bells
3:37
Speaker 1: were so I guess entrenched in societies around the world,
3:42
Speaker 1: civilizations around the world, that they were just routinely used
3:45
Speaker 1: for all sorts of different stuff. Yeah, Aristotle wrote about it. Yeah,
3:49
Speaker 1: back in the fourth century BC. Right, Yeah, that's a
3:51
Speaker 1: long time ago. So he was he was the first,
3:53
Speaker 1: I take it to mention diving bells. Who to describe them? Right? Yeah?
3:58
Speaker 1: Should we read that quote? I think it's a good
4:00
Speaker 1: but you have to read it in an aristotlely voice. Aristotelean, Um, well,
4:06
Speaker 1: I really have no idea what ancient Greeks sounded like. Well,
4:10
Speaker 1: the key is that no one does, so you can
4:13
Speaker 1: just make it up. They enable divers to respire equally
4:17
Speaker 1: well by letting down a cauldron, but this does not
4:20
Speaker 1: fill with water, but retains the air, for it is
4:23
Speaker 1: forced straight down into the vatas I just added a German. Yeah,
4:29
Speaker 1: I was gonna say there was an eighty five percent
4:31
Speaker 1: chance that the Greeks were gonna sound like Sean Connery
4:34
Speaker 1: coming out of you. Yeah, that wasn't Sean Connery. Um
4:40
Speaker 1: so yeah, So Aristotle's talking about this, and the very
4:42
Speaker 1: fact that he's talking about diving bells proves at least
4:46
Speaker 1: that the idea was in place at the time. Yeah,
4:49
Speaker 1: there's some legends that, um, Alexander the Great, who was
4:52
Speaker 1: actually a student of Aristotle's, used a diving bell. Yeah,
4:56
Speaker 1: there's there's pictures drawings of you know, Alexander a Great,
5:00
Speaker 1: like laying down or sitting down beneath the water in
5:03
Speaker 1: some sort of a you know, diving bell or or
5:06
Speaker 1: like a barrel or magic bubble some Sorry, yeah, but
5:09
Speaker 1: we don't know if that means he just talked about
5:11
Speaker 1: it a lot and like draw pictures of me doing this,
5:15
Speaker 1: or if he actually tried it. Um, we're just not sure. Well,
5:18
Speaker 1: so supposedly he used it one when he was eleven,
5:21
Speaker 1: but then again as an older man during the Siege
5:23
Speaker 1: of Tire in a three thirty two b c Um
5:27
Speaker 1: And I looked that up and it looked like it
5:29
Speaker 1: seems pretty reasonable, Like apparently there was some underwater obstructions
5:34
Speaker 1: around Tire and he had some underwater divers removing him,
5:38
Speaker 1: so he used a diving bell to go check on
5:40
Speaker 1: their work. Not the most fantastical tale anyone could tell
5:44
Speaker 1: if they were just making stuff up about him using
5:46
Speaker 1: a diving bell. So I kind of buy that one, Yeah,
5:49
Speaker 1: I could buy it. And of course da Vinci sketched
5:51
Speaker 1: them out because he invented everything. Even if he didn't
5:55
Speaker 1: properly invented, he at least sketched out ideas. You know, well, yeah,
5:59
Speaker 1: he had a lot of great ideas that have come
6:01
Speaker 1: to life now. The star Trek phaser really okay. But
6:08
Speaker 1: Aristotle he kind of hints at the basic physics behind
6:12
Speaker 1: the diving bell. He says that you have a capsule
6:16
Speaker 1: that you're forcing straight down into a water the water,
6:20
Speaker 1: and um, the air bubble, whatever air was inside is
6:24
Speaker 1: pressed upwards so long as the vessel is concave right, yeah,
6:28
Speaker 1: and so long as it is straight down. Like you said,
6:30
Speaker 1: you don't want this thing because you know, if you've
6:32
Speaker 1: ever played in the bathtub, and I know you do,
6:36
Speaker 1: you you know, if you take a cup and invert
6:38
Speaker 1: it and just push it straight down, there's gonna be water.
6:41
Speaker 1: And then if you want to make make it poop,
6:44
Speaker 1: you tilted on a side and the air comes out
6:47
Speaker 1: in little bubbles. That's true, you know, because a poop
6:50
Speaker 1: or shoot a duck. It shoots a duck. But I
6:53
Speaker 1: think every kid has done stuff like that, and that's
6:54
Speaker 1: essentially what all a diving bell is. Yeah, it's just
6:57
Speaker 1: really heavy. Yeah, because when you have a up above
7:00
Speaker 1: water upside down has air in it. When it contacts
7:04
Speaker 1: the water, the air can escape any longer because of
7:07
Speaker 1: the water surface tension, and then when you push it up,
7:10
Speaker 1: the water compresses the air. That's right. So that's all
7:13
Speaker 1: you have, like you said, at the top of a
7:15
Speaker 1: diving belt, inside is compressed air and human beings can
7:18
Speaker 1: breathe that. Yeah. It doesn't have to be concave though,
7:21
Speaker 1: does it. I don't think so. But later I think, well,
7:25
Speaker 1: I think there needs to be some sort of point
7:27
Speaker 1: that the air can be pressed up into, but maybe not.
7:31
Speaker 1: I've seen here they're concave, so maybe that's the best
7:35
Speaker 1: designed for a diving belt. But yeah, not everybody's used
7:38
Speaker 1: concave designs. Yeah, but I mean many were shaped like
7:41
Speaker 1: bells somewhere, barrels like whiskey barrels, um somewhere, wooden, many
7:46
Speaker 1: were iron um. There were They were trying all sorts
7:50
Speaker 1: of things basically just to see if it works right,
7:52
Speaker 1: and they figured out like, the heavier the better, because
7:54
Speaker 1: this thing had to be able to go down to
7:57
Speaker 1: the to the bottom of the sea, whatever depth that was,
8:00
Speaker 1: and not tip over. Yeah, it couldn't tip over, and
8:03
Speaker 1: it had to be balanced too, so you had to
8:05
Speaker 1: have ballasts. If you weren't using an iron diving bellet,
8:09
Speaker 1: you had to put weights on it and they had
8:12
Speaker 1: to be balanced or else it would tip over. It
8:14
Speaker 1: was a big deal. Yeah, And I think the key
8:16
Speaker 1: here is this is breathable air, right like Um, It
8:22
Speaker 1: depends on how deep you are and how big your
8:24
Speaker 1: bell is, obviously, but I think one example I gave
8:27
Speaker 1: in here was if you have a ten foot tall
8:29
Speaker 1: bell down, that's only about eleven inches of air. Um. Now,
8:36
Speaker 1: I don't think they were going that deep back then,
8:39
Speaker 1: or at least they were not smart to do. So, No,
8:42
Speaker 1: those are the ones that died, that's right. So one
8:46
Speaker 1: of the other problems that these people faced aside from dying,
8:49
Speaker 1: because they went too deep and ended up with just
8:51
Speaker 1: eleven inches of air. Yeah. Now we should point out
8:55
Speaker 1: that before we go any further physically speaking, that that
9:00
Speaker 1: by volume, that's eleven inches of air. But that's still
9:05
Speaker 1: the same amount of air that filled up the diving
9:08
Speaker 1: bell above water. So right, it's compressed, So you have
9:12
Speaker 1: compressed there, so all those oxygen molecules are still there.
9:15
Speaker 1: They're just in compressed format. The problem is if you're
9:19
Speaker 1: in there, you're compressed too, right, And when you're in
9:23
Speaker 1: that state of compression, UM, the oxygen and the nitrogen
9:29
Speaker 1: in your bloodstream get compressed as well and they dissolve,
9:35
Speaker 1: which isn't a problem with the oxygen because the tissues
9:38
Speaker 1: are surrounding tissues absorbed that oxygen and they love it.
9:40
Speaker 1: It's like yelling to them. But the nitrogen remains dissolved
9:45
Speaker 1: in the blood until you decompress. Then you have a problem.
9:50
Speaker 1: Then you have a radio head out one. Do they
9:53
Speaker 1: have one called the Bents? Yeah, I didn't know. It's
9:56
Speaker 1: great one. It was the one that preceded okay computer
10:00
Speaker 1: sort of. Did they make a bad album ever? No,
10:03
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Yeah, that's what the Bends is,
10:07
Speaker 1: and that can um when the when the nitrogen UH
10:11
Speaker 1: tries to escape, it forms little bubbles that block blood vessels,
10:15
Speaker 1: and that's why you can have a stroke or a
10:17
Speaker 1: heart attack if you ascend too quickly, and it can
10:20
Speaker 1: go to your joints and cause excruciating pain. I imagine crippling.
10:25
Speaker 1: Remember I mentioned being crippled before. Yeah, you've suffered the bens. No, no, no,
10:30
Speaker 1: Earlier I said, like, you said that she's littered with
10:33
Speaker 1: dead bodies and and crippled bodies. I feel like we
10:35
Speaker 1: talked about my my life long crippling. Well, momentarily I
10:40
Speaker 1: thought you meant then, Okay, I thought I remembered many
10:43
Speaker 1: moons ago you mentioning Scooba diving something about the bens.
10:48
Speaker 1: I've never had the bend. Okay, Yeah, of poor Scuba Cat. Yeah,
10:52
Speaker 1: if he'd gotten the bens, I don't know. Wonder Scooba
10:55
Speaker 1: Cat still around. I don't know who's kind of old already,
10:59
Speaker 1: wasn't he? I don't remember? Boy, that was a winner.
11:05
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, when you come up too quickly, the
11:08
Speaker 1: nitrogen in your blood undissolves, forms bubbles, blocks your blood vessels,
11:13
Speaker 1: blocks your joints, causes tremendous pain, strokes, death, all that stuff. Right,
11:18
Speaker 1: So when you're an ancient bell diver, I guess is
11:22
Speaker 1: what you call just that, right? A bell diver seems right? Um,
11:26
Speaker 1: And you were down for very long, too deep, and
11:29
Speaker 1: you came up too quickly, you're in a lot of trouble,
11:31
Speaker 1: that's right. And they made end up even understood the
11:33
Speaker 1: bents at that point. Imagine they didn't. They're like he
11:36
Speaker 1: just got the diving bell sickness right again. Yeah, it
11:40
Speaker 1: was because he sinned or something like that. He upset Zeus.
11:46
Speaker 1: So things when I went on like this for quite
11:48
Speaker 1: a while, UM, through the Renaissance into the sixteenth century,
11:51
Speaker 1: people were using these diving bells. It was all well
11:53
Speaker 1: and good. They were having a blast down there, having parties.
11:57
Speaker 1: And then at some point people were like, you know what,
12:01
Speaker 1: I bet we could make this better, right, you know,
12:04
Speaker 1: these guys keep running out of air down there and dying,
12:08
Speaker 1: or they run out of air and they have to
12:09
Speaker 1: come up too quick and they get the bend. So
12:11
Speaker 1: how can we improve this? Or they're only fourteen feet
12:15
Speaker 1: down sitting in a bell and what's the point, which
12:18
Speaker 1: is magnificent, but the ship that we need to get
12:21
Speaker 1: to is a hundred feet down. Yeah, exactly, like they
12:23
Speaker 1: needed this. They wanted to have applications they could use
12:27
Speaker 1: like two build things or repair things or get you know,
12:31
Speaker 1: pirates booty exactly. And speaking of pirates, check Sparrow does
12:35
Speaker 1: this with a canoe in the first UM Pirates of
12:40
Speaker 1: the Caribbean. Yeah, he turns a canoe upside down and
12:43
Speaker 1: like walks along the ocean bottom and I don't remember
12:47
Speaker 1: how he pulls the canoe down. Technically speaking, it's possible
12:52
Speaker 1: if he pulled it straight down, I think the magic
12:54
Speaker 1: of Disney, but I don't think it's it's physically possible
12:57
Speaker 1: what he did. Just just want to make or than
13:00
Speaker 1: anybody who really liked that part pooh poo it okay,
13:05
Speaker 1: so uh. In the late sixteen hundreds, it was a
13:08
Speaker 1: Frenchman named Dennis Papine and m He was one of
13:12
Speaker 1: the first dudes that said, you know what, I think
13:14
Speaker 1: we can get some fresh air into there, and very
13:18
Speaker 1: smartly and simply he used hoses and bellows that you know,
13:23
Speaker 1: the bellows were outside obviously up on you know, the boat,
13:27
Speaker 1: and they had dudes manning the bellows and pumping fresh
13:30
Speaker 1: air in there. Yeah, and it wasn't even like difficult.
13:32
Speaker 1: You didn't even have to navigate like where to put
13:35
Speaker 1: the hole in the top of the diving The hose
13:37
Speaker 1: literally just goes under the bottom and up inside and
13:42
Speaker 1: then the air just presses up super easy. Yeah, so
13:45
Speaker 1: you've got fresh air now. Yeah, they can stay down
13:47
Speaker 1: there longer. That's all that's solved, basically, But it's still
13:50
Speaker 1: not pressurized. The air they're pumping in isn't pressurized, that's true.
13:55
Speaker 1: So they couldn't go any deeper. They could just stay
13:57
Speaker 1: down there and do whatever the heck they were doing
14:00
Speaker 1: sitting in these cast iron bells. Right, So we we
14:03
Speaker 1: invent diving bells in at least the fifth century b C.
14:08
Speaker 1: We have to wait until the sevent century a d
14:13
Speaker 1: Before we make a real innovation to them. Now we
14:17
Speaker 1: have a whole other obstacle pressurizing these things. How long
14:20
Speaker 1: do we have to wait to overcome that? One? A year?
14:24
Speaker 1: It's true. Uh, And it took an Englishman to do so.
14:28
Speaker 1: Edmund halle Um. He basically attached these wooden barrels, he's
14:35
Speaker 1: weighted wooden barrels to the diving bell and they could
14:38
Speaker 1: be brought up and down, and they contained air at
14:42
Speaker 1: the bottom of each of these as a whole. Uh,
14:45
Speaker 1: that allowed water to come in, forcing the air up.
14:47
Speaker 1: And at the top was a hose that ran from
14:49
Speaker 1: that barrel to the bottom of the diving bell, and
14:53
Speaker 1: there was a faucet. So basically, whenever it was it's
14:57
Speaker 1: sort of like having air tanks down there. Whenever they
15:00
Speaker 1: to um more pressure, you know, if they were trying
15:03
Speaker 1: to equalize things. They would just turn their little faucet
15:06
Speaker 1: and allow air in, and once the barrel was empty,
15:09
Speaker 1: they would pull the barrels up, um I guess refill
15:14
Speaker 1: them with air, which probably meant just opening the top
15:17
Speaker 1: and then closing it again it's filled up, and then
15:20
Speaker 1: lower it back down there and all of a sudden
15:24
Speaker 1: you could control the pressure. And that was the same
15:26
Speaker 1: um Halle who uh named a comment after himself. It
15:32
Speaker 1: was no way that guy was all over the place
15:35
Speaker 1: renaissance man. Yeah, yeah, that's where that word comes. There's
15:38
Speaker 1: a post renaissance renaissance man. That's so. Yeah. So now
15:42
Speaker 1: we have pressurized diving bells, right yeah, and basically equal
15:46
Speaker 1: to that of the surrounding water. So that means you
15:48
Speaker 1: can go deeper and stay down longer. You can you
15:51
Speaker 1: you run out, like if the water starts to creep up,
15:53
Speaker 1: you just add more pressurized air and it pushes the
15:56
Speaker 1: water back down like it keeps the water at baby,
15:59
Speaker 1: because it's at the same pressure. So to the water,
16:02
Speaker 1: whatever is inside the diving bell might as well just
16:05
Speaker 1: be more water. It doesn't have this crazy urge to
16:09
Speaker 1: fill the diving bell up any longer because there's something
16:12
Speaker 1: they're just kind of goes along. It's happy way to
16:14
Speaker 1: the Mariana Trench. It's right. And I bet there was
16:17
Speaker 1: some seventeenth century David Blaine that very shortly afterward it
16:21
Speaker 1: was like, I can stay down here for two months,
16:24
Speaker 1: and people like, who cares? Well? The horrible thing was, uh,
16:28
Speaker 1: when you added pressurized air. Again, you're pressurizing. That's just
16:33
Speaker 1: the diving belt, but the people. Yeah, so to become
16:36
Speaker 1: pressurized to go down in a diving bell was a
16:38
Speaker 1: pretty horrific thing to endure in and of itself. Yeah,
16:42
Speaker 1: I guess um when they built the Brooklyn Bridge to
16:47
Speaker 1: you know, the two towers that that, I guess that. Yeah,
16:53
Speaker 1: those are down almost to the bedrock. They were going
16:56
Speaker 1: to go down the bed rock, and then they found
16:57
Speaker 1: out like there's some pretty stable aggregate defeat above bedrocks,
17:01
Speaker 1: so they just planted them on those. But um, to
17:05
Speaker 1: construct those, they had to drop these huge casans, which
17:09
Speaker 1: are basically like giant structural diving bells, and they pressurized
17:14
Speaker 1: them and it kept the water of the river out,
17:17
Speaker 1: so like literally the river's just flowing around this stuff.
17:21
Speaker 1: But there's men working in these things and they'd have
17:24
Speaker 1: to pressurize before going in them, and it was just
17:27
Speaker 1: like this. Their ear drums would burst once in a
17:30
Speaker 1: while as they were being pressure because it wasn't like gently,
17:34
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, I guess it was better
17:36
Speaker 1: than just walking right into the casson, but it was
17:40
Speaker 1: still pretty rough. And then they go and working there
17:42
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours and then come out and
17:45
Speaker 1: hopefully not get decompression sickness to bends. But actually the
17:49
Speaker 1: project manager, the son of the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge,
17:53
Speaker 1: Washington Row Billy is the Sun, he suffered a lifelong
17:57
Speaker 1: crippling from decompression sickness after going and inspecting some of
18:01
Speaker 1: the work in one of the Kim something coming out
18:03
Speaker 1: too quickly. Well know, a lot of people died, and like, uh,
18:06
Speaker 1: I enjoy walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, as many New
18:09
Speaker 1: Yorkers do, and you should think about that next time
18:11
Speaker 1: you're doing so. Yeah, that like people gave up their
18:14
Speaker 1: lives too, so you could like say snarky things and
18:17
Speaker 1: Instagram photos of yourself and all the other things that
18:21
Speaker 1: you do. Um, there's a really great Kim Burns documentary
18:24
Speaker 1: on the construction of Brooklyn Bridge. Who I haven't seen
18:27
Speaker 1: that one. It's good. It's like a straight up PBS one.
18:30
Speaker 1: No frills. Well, he's not about frills. He just moves
18:33
Speaker 1: pictures like around and hands in and out. This may
18:37
Speaker 1: be his least frilly. Okay, yeah, I'm not knocking Kimburns.
18:41
Speaker 1: I like a good Kimburns. Well you'll probably like this
18:43
Speaker 1: one though. So uh. A hundred years after being able
18:47
Speaker 1: to control the pressure with bellows and that the barrels,
18:50
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, um and English and other Englishman, a scientists
18:53
Speaker 1: named John Smeaton invented an actual diving air pump in
18:58
Speaker 1: and it was on the surface obviously, and took like
19:01
Speaker 1: four guys to operate it. Um. And it was basically
19:05
Speaker 1: like Dennis Peppine's original plan, but it was just mechanized.
19:11
Speaker 1: So they were able to build like big ones like people.
19:15
Speaker 1: There's many's like twelve people could go down and rush
19:18
Speaker 1: things and like have a party if they wanted to.
19:21
Speaker 1: They made windows eventually, Yeah, they put electricity in them.
19:24
Speaker 1: Yeah that's a little scary for that time period. Oh yeah,
19:29
Speaker 1: wouldn't I don't know, I don't know if I would
19:30
Speaker 1: have trusted that. Yeah, I wouldn't be you know, seventeen
19:33
Speaker 1: or early and we just discovered electricity. Now, let's put
19:37
Speaker 1: it in under water. And they used them for, like
19:39
Speaker 1: you said, building bridges and repairing docks, and early saboteurs
19:43
Speaker 1: would sneak up underwater to um cut the anchor lines
19:47
Speaker 1: of enemy ships. Really, that's a very handy use. And
19:52
Speaker 1: so you dug up a cool story about um was
19:55
Speaker 1: that this year it was just this May. Yeah, a
19:59
Speaker 1: guy named Perrison O'Kenny at twenty nine year old Nigerian
20:02
Speaker 1: boat cook was on a tugboat, a Chevron tug boat
20:06
Speaker 1: and in the Atlantic and it capsized and he was
20:09
Speaker 1: eventually through all this, you know, capsizing and tumbling around
20:14
Speaker 1: and water flowing in and sinking a hundred feet yeah,
20:16
Speaker 1: and sinking of course, ended up in a bathroom trapped
20:21
Speaker 1: with air. Yeah, sort of like the same concept of
20:24
Speaker 1: a diving bell. And people wondered he'd survived after sixty hours.
20:28
Speaker 1: That's a good sixty hours. But physicists were like, well,
20:32
Speaker 1: w how did this happen? Yeah, but you probably shouldn't
20:34
Speaker 1: have been able to live that long down there, right,
20:36
Speaker 1: they were. The press reported that he had something like
20:39
Speaker 1: four ft of air something like that, and um, yeah,
20:43
Speaker 1: the the chamber that he was in was only about
20:46
Speaker 1: four ft high, So sixty hours of air shouldn't have worked.
20:52
Speaker 1: It shouldn't have kept him alive because about it, like,
20:55
Speaker 1: you're breathing, even if it is pressurized there, you're breathing air,
20:58
Speaker 1: you're also exhaling carbon dioxide, and when the the ratio
21:02
Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide or the percentage of it gets above five,
21:07
Speaker 1: things start to go horribly awry and you die shortly
21:10
Speaker 1: after that. Yeah, I didn't realize that lack of oxygen
21:14
Speaker 1: isn't what kills people. It's too much CEO two. Yeah,
21:16
Speaker 1: that's pretty interesting. Yeah, it can happen when you're on
21:19
Speaker 1: a ventilator. UM. That's apparently a big risk. When you
21:24
Speaker 1: innobate somebody's the ox the CEO to build up, you
21:27
Speaker 1: can kill him. So anyway, why didn't this guy die? Well,
21:30
Speaker 1: it turns out with pressurized air, especially when it's um
21:35
Speaker 1: pressurized against cold water, c O two is readily absorbed
21:39
Speaker 1: by that water around it. So when he was exhaling,
21:43
Speaker 1: the oxygen was remaining, but the c O two is
21:45
Speaker 1: basically being wicked away. And since that c O two
21:49
Speaker 1: or the the air bubble that he was in was pressurized.
21:52
Speaker 1: He was a hundred feet underwater um which actually helped him. Right,
21:56
Speaker 1: he had a lot of oxygen. A bunch of oxygen
21:59
Speaker 1: was just pushed into this little area. But the CEO
22:01
Speaker 1: two is being wicked awayne That's how he managed to survive. Yeah.
22:04
Speaker 1: It said for every ten ms you descend um one
22:07
Speaker 1: atmosphere is pressure of pressure is added and it makes
22:11
Speaker 1: it more dense, according to some lawmaker named Boil, according
22:16
Speaker 1: to Boyle's law. And so since he was thirty meters below,
22:20
Speaker 1: it became more dense by times four. And so that
22:24
Speaker 1: meant that he didn't need as much air as you
22:28
Speaker 1: would think for someone that's under underwater. And you know,
22:32
Speaker 1: so how much did he need, like you need a
22:35
Speaker 1: day of air? So he only needed six cubic meters
22:39
Speaker 1: in the end because of the temperature of the water
22:41
Speaker 1: and how deep he was. Right, and and also, I mean,
22:43
Speaker 1: don't remember this a lot of air compressed into the
22:47
Speaker 1: same amount of area. All those molecules are still present, Yeah,
22:50
Speaker 1: they're just in a smaller amount of area. They also
22:53
Speaker 1: think though, that it was connected to another air pocket,
22:57
Speaker 1: which probably helped even still, the guy survived in an
23:00
Speaker 1: impromptu inadvertent diving bell a hundred feet below the surface
23:05
Speaker 1: for sixty hours. Dude in the dark under the ocean
23:08
Speaker 1: with his head next to a toilet man, and they
23:11
Speaker 1: said that he could hear the sea life scavenging on
23:14
Speaker 1: his dead crewmates. That's perfect. That happened this May. Yeah,
23:21
Speaker 1: not in like eighteen twelve. In May. Yeah, so there
23:25
Speaker 1: you go. By the way, we'll insert this right now
23:28
Speaker 1: because it's a good place for it. You were you
23:31
Speaker 1: you were out of town. Did you hear about the
23:32
Speaker 1: whole Sharknado thing. Yeah, you predicted Sharknado. I invented it. Yeah,
23:38
Speaker 1: that's pretty impressive. For those of you don't don't know.
23:41
Speaker 1: Sharknado was a very cheesy movie on a network that
23:45
Speaker 1: UM aired a couple of weeks ago and blew up.
23:49
Speaker 1: Blew Up didn't get as many viewers from the blow
23:52
Speaker 1: up as they would have hoped, But um I watched it.
23:54
Speaker 1: It was very funny and fun It wasn't dumb. Oh yeah,
23:57
Speaker 1: it was terrible, but you know in that way. It
23:59
Speaker 1: wasn't one of the guests from two and no on it. Yeah,
24:01
Speaker 1: Iron's ear ring was in it. Terror Fred who uh oh, yeah,
24:05
Speaker 1: she's looking rough. You mean I were out of the
24:09
Speaker 1: country and we heard about this that's Sharknado. So thankfully
24:12
Speaker 1: one of our listeners um alerted me to the fact
24:16
Speaker 1: that I invented Sharknado because in the desert, can it
24:19
Speaker 1: really rain frogs? Episode? Um, I say this, Uh no,
24:25
Speaker 1: I mean I think they're light, because that's the whole point.
24:28
Speaker 1: Even an updraft from a water spelled two miles an
24:31
Speaker 1: hour isn't going to be picking up you know, great
24:34
Speaker 1: white sharks. Right, that's that's a movie for you, raining sharks.
24:42
Speaker 1: So thanks to fan Todd Waters for bringing that to
24:45
Speaker 1: my attention. That's impressive. You very clearly. I even said
24:49
Speaker 1: a movie. Yeah, you invented Sharknado. And this thing was
24:53
Speaker 1: released a good year ago, right, it was I think
24:56
Speaker 1: May of two thousand twelve, so that was almost a year.
24:59
Speaker 1: But for Harrison o'kine survives in a diving bell, all
25:03
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff coming together, doing the bold as feeling
25:06
Speaker 1: the flow. So I don't know if I can sue anybody,
25:09
Speaker 1: but I'm looking into it. Have you, I see you
25:12
Speaker 1: should always ask before you sue, like yeah, sure, so
25:16
Speaker 1: give me some give me some cabbage, some bread. Little
25:20
Speaker 1: shark Nato cheese. I think we should bring back bread
25:23
Speaker 1: for money, bringing a little bread. Yeah, all right, so
25:27
Speaker 1: they sent me bread though that would suck with like
25:30
Speaker 1: a note that decisions want shaped like a shark. Yeah,
25:34
Speaker 1: maybe we should bring back bread into the regular vernacular
25:37
Speaker 1: and then you ask them. Okay, okay, that's our plan,
25:41
Speaker 1: all right, So sorry about that sidebar. I just want
25:43
Speaker 1: to give myself credit words. You should be very proud
25:45
Speaker 1: of that. Thanks. Um. Hey, I know I want a
25:48
Speaker 1: good movie idea comes along, I'm all over it. You
25:51
Speaker 1: and Iron's earing. Uh. If you want to learn more
25:54
Speaker 1: about diving bells, you should type those two words into
25:57
Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com and
26:00
Speaker 1: it will bring up this delightful little article written by
26:03
Speaker 1: a young exuberant Chuck Bryant. And since I said exuberant,
26:11
Speaker 1: it's time for a message break. And now it's time
26:19
Speaker 1: for listener meal Chuck. Whether you like it or not,
26:21
Speaker 1: I hope you're ready. We heard from another teacher. We'd
26:26
Speaker 1: like to read these. Hey, guys, the reason I'm writing
26:29
Speaker 1: it is to tell you how much stuff you should
26:31
Speaker 1: know aways help me during my first year of teaching.
26:33
Speaker 1: I am twenty four, just finished my first year as
26:35
Speaker 1: a high school social studies teacher. Alight. This year, I
26:39
Speaker 1: taught law and justice and ap psychology. Law and justice
26:43
Speaker 1: that's awesome, and a p psychology. Yeah, well rounded. Since
26:47
Speaker 1: I listened to a huge bulk of your shows. When
26:51
Speaker 1: I was preparing various lessons, I used the information that
26:53
Speaker 1: I had on different podcasts I'd heard on different podcasts.
26:57
Speaker 1: Then I thought, you know what, I should just play it.
26:59
Speaker 1: I'll get even lazier and just play the show. Um.
27:04
Speaker 1: The podcast were a big hit with the kids. They
27:06
Speaker 1: got a break from hearing my voice and I got
27:08
Speaker 1: a break from talking stuff you should know. Is also
27:11
Speaker 1: great UH for teachers because the articles you guys use
27:15
Speaker 1: for the podcast are well researched and written. Thank you.
27:19
Speaker 1: I don't have to worry that you guys are just
27:21
Speaker 1: making up information, and if you are, don't tell me. UM.
27:24
Speaker 1: Students said the winner of their all time favorite UH
27:27
Speaker 1: in class was how Barbie works that that's probably my
27:31
Speaker 1: favorite too. That's a good one. I created a pretty
27:34
Speaker 1: awesome power point to accompany it, and I attached it
27:38
Speaker 1: and I looked at it's really neat actually. Um. We
27:41
Speaker 1: discussed how Barbie and other toys can influence gender identity,
27:44
Speaker 1: embody image and developing children. UM. Overall, some of the
27:48
Speaker 1: podcasts up streamed UM Japanese and tournament camps do right
27:52
Speaker 1: your privacy when you die? UM. In psychology, I hit
27:56
Speaker 1: on concussions, uh, Monkhalsen syndrome, Yeah, hypnosis, lobotomy is and PTSD.
28:03
Speaker 1: Remember lobotomy that was one of the ALLFENDESCA. We should
28:07
Speaker 1: have called it Lobotomy's heart. We love my lobotomy On MPR,
28:12
Speaker 1: do you remember, Oh yeah, that dude, Yeah, that guy
28:15
Speaker 1: here's our hero. What's his name, Howard something? Yeah, Howard.
28:21
Speaker 1: Just to tell you guys again, thanks a lot for
28:22
Speaker 1: making my job easier because you use classroom appropriate language
28:26
Speaker 1: and report factual research based on evidence and information. You're
28:30
Speaker 1: an amazing classroom resorts resorts. Did you say there? Did you, Misspella?
28:36
Speaker 1: I did? Okay, keep them coming, Carly Brown, But thanks
28:41
Speaker 1: a lot, Carly Brown. We appreciate that, Miss Brown, as
28:43
Speaker 1: your students probably calling you. That's right, Thank you, miss
28:46
Speaker 1: Brown for letting us know that. We like to know
28:48
Speaker 1: that we're helping shape young minds for the better. That's right. UM.
28:52
Speaker 1: And we do use classroom appropriate language, don't we never
28:55
Speaker 1: termed it that. All right, Well let's see chuckers, Um,
29:00
Speaker 1: what should we say? Anything you want to hear about? Uh,
29:04
Speaker 1: if you have invented something, because I've invent into snowboard too.
29:07
Speaker 1: Remember no, I don't remember that. I have a crayon
29:11
Speaker 1: drawing from when I was six of of the skiboard. Yeah,
29:15
Speaker 1: it's a guy going down as a ski slope on
29:18
Speaker 1: a little skateboard of skis on. Wow. So I've invented
29:21
Speaker 1: two things, the Sharknado and the snowboard. So if you
29:24
Speaker 1: haven't inadvertently invented something, that's a great one. Man, we'd
29:28
Speaker 1: love to hear about it. Yeah. Um, you can tweet
29:30
Speaker 1: that to us at s Y s K podcast. You
29:32
Speaker 1: can post it on our Facebook page at Facebook dot com,
29:36
Speaker 1: Slash you Should Know. You can send us an email
29:38
Speaker 1: at Chuck and I will both get to Stuff Podcast
29:41
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com, and you can check out our
29:45
Speaker 1: home on the web. It's a little website known as
29:47
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
29:55
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works
29:58
Speaker 1: dot com. This episode of Stuff You Should Know is
30:06
Speaker 1: brought to you by State Farm