Why do people, submarines, and essentially everything that dives too far into the water get crushed? I get that it’s the weight of the water, but shouldn’t the pressure just come from the top and not everywhere, as if there were a weight on you?
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The pressure would just come from on top of you if the water was solid. But water isn’t solid…it will shear and distort continuously in response to pressure if it can. Among other things, this means the water wants to go any direction it can when squeezed from above. If you put something in it’s way, like the size of a submarine, it will happily push on that.
Water (and other liquids) basically have to transmit all pressure equally in all directions because, if they didn’t, they’d change shape until they were. Solids don’t work like this, solids can resist shear and compression (up to a point) without continuous deformation.
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