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?
In: 7
Water moves.
If you push a balloon full of air into water, the water around the balloon is trying to be lower than the air (which is what makes it feel like the balloon is being pushed out of the water). If it can’t do that, the shoving of the water pushes on whatever it can shove(the bottom and sides of the balloon) maybe deforming it, but definitely pushing.
When you’ve pushed the balloon all the way under the water, the water above it is slightly helping weigh down the balloon by pressing on the top, but there’s not enough friction and without your hand there, all the pressure from below and the sides would push the balloon through the water above because the water flows around it. The important thing to think about here is the fact that the water above and to the side is also pressing down on the water just to the side of the balloon.
As you get deeper and there is more water on the top, the weight of is is pushing on the balloon, but it’s also pushing on all the water around the balloon. That water really wants to go somewhere and everything around it is water also under the same pressure… except this balloon of air that does NOT have the same amount of push back, so the balloon gets pushed/squished.
When it comes to people/submarines, we are not balloons. We have bones or steel. This means we can take certain amounts of pushing without breaking. Unfortunately if the pushing gets too strong, the bones and steel break causing a very fast collapse/ implosion.
Hope this helps.
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