I was thinking about deep sea, specifically. If take an air-filled balloon deeper and deeper it will get smaller and smaller. If I take a water filled balloon, it doesn’t change much (I guess temperature may have a small effect on density?).
If I take a thin aluminium air filled sphere it will crush at a certain depth. If it’s water filled it stays intact.
Here’s my question: if I enclose myself in a metal sphere that’s filled with water (so that it doesn’t crush), will I be subjected to the pressure of the water above me? If yes, how is the water pressure transmitted through the rigid sphere? If it was an air filled sphere, it would crush me, but does the water in the sphere somehow protect me?
I think I just haven’t got my head around a few key principles…
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Water is an incompressible fluid. That is it will always maintain the same volume under pressure. This is due to the molecular structure of H2O. Pressure in the ocean comes from the weight of the water above and the compression resistance of the water around you. That weight and resistance would be transfered through the metal sphere you imagined, to the water inside. You would hear some cracking and creaking as the imperfections in the metal are pushed around, but as the weight presses on the sphere from the outside, the resistance to compression presses out from the water inside.
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