Epic Slow-Mo Drum Implosions!

[Music] So a while back, I did an imploding drum experiment. But at the time, I didn't have a very good high-speed camera, and so I used something called optical flow to interpolate between the frames. It basically just tries to add in what must have happened, but since it doesn't actually capture what happened, you can see that it actually warps the frame and looks really weird and unrealistic.

So I've come down to the Queston Science Center in camera, and I'm going to shoot this again with their amazing high-speed 1200 frames per second. Okay, we've got steam billowing out of the drum, so it's totally full of water vapor at the moment. Now I'm going to take it off the heating element. Now we're going to cool down all that water in there, which is going to cause it to condense. As it condenses, it's going to create a vacuum in there, which hopefully will get it to [Applause] implode.

Oh, oh! [Music] Yeah! [Music] A lot of people think this experiment is just about showing the power of the atmosphere, but I think there's a more important consequence. It explains why, at a power station, for example, you need to cool the steam as it comes out of the exit to turn over a turbine. You have to get very hot steam, and everyone appreciates that the steam needs to be incredibly hot— as hot as you can make it.

But on the other side of the turbine, you need to use a condenser to cool down that steam, and this is why: because that creates this big suction. So not only do you heat up the steam so it pushes over the turbine, you also need to cool it down when it's gone through the turbine. So, you have a big change in energy, and that is what turns the turbine over.

Now, of course, suction is just the word we use when a fluid flows from an area of higher pressure into an area of lower pressure, which you'd know if you've seen Vsauce's video on the space straw. The lowest pressure you can get in a gas is zero, a perfect vacuum. But you can actually get negative pressures if the fluid is a liquid and it's inside a tree. Now that's real suction!

So click on the link in the description if you want to learn more. That 20 L drum was good, but perhaps this 200 L drum will be better. But the question is, will it implode? I want you to place your bets now. Uh, we have two gas heaters; you can see heating up this drum. It's pretty hot. We have a bit of steam coming out the top, as you can see there. In a moment, we're going to pull it off these gas burners, seal it up, and start cooling it down with water.

The water vapor inside will condense, and we will see if the atmosphere can crush it. I'm cautiously [Music] optimistic. [Music] [Music] Round objects are incredibly strong under compression, as Destin showed us with Prince Rupert's drop. But if you create just a little ding in a round object, it should significantly weaken the structure, and that's what the hammer is for. Well, that's how it should work in theory, anyway.

Underwhelming. S.S. Oh, there we go! [Music] The implosion happens so fast— in just 25,000 of a second— that the water on the left-hand side of the drum can't keep up. Have a look: a human blink takes about 100 milliseconds. That's four times the time it took for the drum to implode, so it's literally blink and you'll miss it!

So there we go! We showed that the atmosphere is powerful enough to crumple even this very thick, very big drum. When we later measured, we found that the drum had crumpled into a perfect equilateral prism, which might not surprise you if, unlike Viart, you prefer your mashed potatoes with a minimum amount of gravy. You see, for a given perimeter, the equilateral triangle encloses the minimum amount of area of any regular polygon.

So the drum was optimizing to make the minimum volume in its interior, which is what you'd expect 'cause there's a vacuum in there. Isn't that awesome? That is awesome! That feels good! Now, you may have noticed that the big drum crumpled into an equilateral prism, whereas the smaller drum crumpled into something resembling a hexagon.

So the question is, why would they crumple in different ways? I mean, one thing I was thinking was that perhaps they were created in different ways, so maybe they were welded in different points, and that explains the structure that we saw. But I'd like to hear your thoughts. Why do you think we saw these different crumpling patterns?

I mean, obviously, things with three corners are generally quite stable, so that may explain also why it crumpled just to a triangular prism. But I'd like to hear what you have to say, so let me know in the comments!