Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK Selects: How Does a Diving Bell Work?

Transcript

SYSK Selects: How Does a Diving Bell Work? · Stuff You Should Know

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