How to crush a tank car

July 28, 2005 8:53 AM

How not to clean a tank car. Apparently someone steam cleaned a railroad tank car and then having finished the job closed all the valves and hatches tightly. Physics then took over.
posted by caddis (93 comments total)

I like the page's "What's your hypothesis?" feature. My hypothesis is "Jesus Christ in a space ship with a candlestick."
posted by davy at 9:04 AM on July 28, 2005

I wonder how effectively this could be corrected just by heating up the car...
posted by Galvatron at 9:11 AM on July 28, 2005

Tank Car Jargon Dictionary, and btw, how expensive of a mistake was that?
posted by R. Mutt at 9:17 AM on July 28, 2005

Or by re-inflating it?
posted by elwoodwiles at 9:18 AM on July 28, 2005

So....these cleaners graduate high school?

My mom had to go to work before she got very far in school, so I understood one day when her hand hurt when she got cleaning solution (a base) all over it. I poured lemon juice on it and *miraculously* it stopped hurting. But when she was in school, it wasn't really education.

There shouldn't be an excuse for this today.
posted by Smedleyman at 9:21 AM on July 28, 2005

This is awesome! I would have loved to have heard what it sounded like as it crushed itself.

A really great find, caddis!
posted by fenriq at 9:24 AM on July 28, 2005

I loved the link but thought they were terribly condescending. How the heck would anyone really know that, unless they studied physics extensively? I can't be the only person who is surprised by this.
posted by agregoli at 9:30 AM on July 28, 2005

It doesn't take a physics degree to notice that if you fill a plastic container with hot food, then put it in the fridge, the lid gets vaccum sealed on....
posted by nomisxid at 9:35 AM on July 28, 2005

So....these cleaners graduate high school?

My mom had to go to work before she got very far in school, so I understood one day when her hand hurt when she got cleaning solution (a base) all over it. I poured lemon juice on it and *miraculously* it stopped hurting. But when she was in school, it wasn't really education.

There shouldn't be an excuse for this today.
. . . .

I loved the link but thought they were terribly condescending. How the heck would anyone really know that, unless they studied physics extensively? I can't be the only person who is surprised by this.

I have a very good education but am completely uninterested in most things scientific. Never took physics, even. So I, too, was plenty surprised by the tankcar photo. (Post-collapse, it looks kinda like an Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, btw.)
posted by scratch at 9:38 AM on July 28, 2005

Illy coffee company delivers their bulk coffee in large metal containers. When one is emptied we fill it with steam and seal it up. It's fun to just sit there and watch it implode.

Maybe it's some kind of metaphor that's best appreciated when one runs a restaurant.
posted by elwoodwiles at 9:41 AM on July 28, 2005

I'd say the responsibility for knowing this would happen falls on the people hiring the cleaners, not the cleaners themselves. If you were hired to clean something, wouldn't you close and lock it after you were done? What small percentage of the population could possibly imagine a steel traincar collapsing simply because no valves were left open? Not me. (And that's why this webpage and its images are so compelling).
posted by nobody at 9:47 AM on July 28, 2005

What small percentage of the population could possibly imagine a steel traincar collapsing simply because no valves were left open? Not me. (And that's why this webpage and its images are so compelling).

Hear hear. I did very well in physics and chemistry in school, and it makes perfect sense that this can happen.

But standing next to such a hefty, sturdy-looking, jillion-pound lump of industrial equipment, I probably wouldn't have thought of it either.

I'm surprised there isn't a negative-pressure release valve to prevent this sort of accident.
posted by Western Infidels at 10:04 AM on July 28, 2005

Add another name to the 'surprised it happened' list.

First of all, I wouldn't have thought that the pressure differential would be great enough to crush it... If you told me there was no relief valve, I would've simply guesed that it would be very, very hard to open the hatches later.

Secondly I would've thought that there'd be a relief valve if that was a potential issue, if only because such a valve would be extremely cheap compared to the cost of the occasional tank-car.
posted by mosch at 10:42 AM on July 28, 2005

So....these cleaners graduate high school?

Maybe, maybe not. When I worked for a railroad many eons ago, the requirement was that you had to know how to read and write the English language and be in excellent health. The jobs aren't particularly glamorous and as a rule are very dangerous.

I don't know that this is the case now, but back in the day the real shit jobs generally went to the guys with the least seniority and training. In many cases these were newly arrived immigrants who needed help with speaking English, let alone the reading and writing bit.
posted by SteveInMaine at 10:57 AM on July 28, 2005

It doesn't take a physics degree to notice that if you fill a plastic container with hot food, then put it in the fridge, the lid gets vaccum sealed on....

No, but why would I notice that and think about the scientific process? Why would I apply something that small to something so large?

Sorry, this might be obvious to some, but not to my English-major brain. The page read like a bunch of snooty-snoots.
posted by agregoli at 10:59 AM on July 28, 2005

I agree that its hard to think a steel container with inch thick walls would be subject to the same deformation as a plastic milk jug or aluminum can.
posted by fenriq at 11:03 AM on July 28, 2005

I'm not surprised it happened.

Another set of pictures (except for the ominous links to the DMCA) for the Oops Archive.
posted by OmieWise at 11:04 AM on July 28, 2005

Wanna help this lady figure out the opposite of the imploding soft drink problem?
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 11:13 AM on July 28, 2005

The page didn't seem all that condescending to me. It says: To be perfectly honest, it[']s a mistake most of us including myself could have easily made. Keep your brain in gear, at all times.

I'm a physics weenie and I wouldn't really have thought this would happen, even if I had thought about the possibility while cleaning the car. I would think there would be enough air in the car to keep the pressure from dropping that low, and even so I'd think a car with a pressure rating of 500psig could withstand a measly -15psig without collapsing. I'd be wrong, apparently.
posted by hattifattener at 11:14 AM on July 28, 2005

Negative pressure is a controversial theory. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.
posted by Ynoxas at 11:17 AM on July 28, 2005

agregoli: why would I notice that and think about the scientific process? Why would I apply something that small to something so large?

IMHO, that's the basic thing that science education should teach: that if some phenomenon applies to one thing, it probably applies to other things; that noticing stuff and thinking it through can help you see what will happen before it happens; and in general that the world is amenable to reason. You also learn a bunch of fiddly details, like "steam shrinks when it condenses" and "hot air rises" and whatnot, and those fiddly details are needed to make sense of the world we find ourselves in, but they're not (IMHO) the core of the idea.
posted by hattifattener at 11:22 AM on July 28, 2005 [1 favorite]

No, but why would I notice that and think about the scientific process? Why would I apply something that small to something so large?

Sorry, this might be obvious to some, but not to my English-major brain. The page read like a bunch of snooty-snoots.

In high school, I learned to analyze short stories for such things as plot, theme, characters, etc. I never dreamed those same elements could be analyzed in novels!!
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 11:26 AM on July 28, 2005

hattifattiner: IMHO, that's the basic thing that science education should teach:

Well, duh.

But the problem is that some of those generalizations of science are really counterintuitive to our everyday experience of the world. There is a great documentary film in which Harvard graduates explained the seasons in terms of the distance between the Sun and the Earth. The everyday experience that your hand gets warmer closer to a lightbulb tends to trump basic astronomy, even among a highly educated elite.

For most people, developing a scientific understanding of the world is an uphill battle.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:39 AM on July 28, 2005

My sister worked for a large unnamed oil company, and was regaled with the tale of the emergency procedures at a refinery that said "See fire, run towards it, activating emergency valves along the way". Well, apparently, that worked great until one day, at a refinery with newer higher presure emergency systems, it seems someone followed this exact procedure.

Turns out that the pressure head was just a wee bit stronger than the leverage available to open that last valve. Result: fricking hugungous fire, courtesy of basic physics.

Live and learn, right?
posted by dglynn at 11:47 AM on July 28, 2005

Ok, thanks for making fun of me! Yes, I'm not smart in the same way as you. Sorry.

I have the opposite of a science brain. I DO NOT think about this stuff, nor do I give two figs. If that makes me stupid in some people's eyes, I don't care either. I have an artistic, language-oriented brain and stuff like this is extremely surprising (and yeah, I don't remember science class, so sue me. It's been 6 years since I took any science courses and the last one I took was biology in college, not physics - the last physics class I ever took was an INTRO class to chemistry AND physics and I barely passed).

We're all different flowers, you know?
posted by agregoli at 11:47 AM on July 28, 2005

I dunno. I spent a lot of time with physics: I toyed with getting a degree in it, taking such fun classes as modern physics, mechanics, quantum physics, and even thermal physics. So it's not like I'm a physics dolt. And I bet you dollars to doughnuts I would have completely overlooked this. Sure, I know exactly what happened after the fact: pressure, temperature and volume are the three related measurements. Volume was rigidly fixed, temperature was on a steady decline, so pressure has to match. As it turns out, the car is not strong enough to deal with that.

I would have missed that fact, though.

But I'm not sure the web page is trying to be snooty. I think it was more trying to get you to think about what happened yourself, like the page was aimed at High School physics students.
posted by teece at 11:48 AM on July 28, 2005

Yeah, you're right - it IS written like a mind-buster for high schoolers.
posted by agregoli at 11:51 AM on July 28, 2005

hattifattener, If it was still steamy in there when they sealed it (Which it probably was) then the pressure might have dropped much more than the Charles's Law (volume is proportional to temp in Kelvins) would predict, as the water vapor condensed inside, reducing the number of gas molecules.
posted by aubilenon at 11:52 AM on July 28, 2005

This will probably be interpreted as an insult, or as condescension, but I really don't mean it to come off that way. I'm just genuinely curious about how people can get a college degree (or even high school) and still not know the basics of physics, chemistry, or math.

I mean, even though my degree was in science, and I used to be a researcher, I still have a working knowledge of literature, politics, geography, and history. I tried to be well-rounded. If someone mentions James Joyce or Mao Tse-Tung, I don't stare at them blankly, or shrug and say, "That's history stuff." But only the kids in Babylon 5 t-shirts with coke-bottle glasses learn any science? I don't get it.

I'm probably biased, but if I had to choose to lean in either direction, I'd argue that a science education would be even more important than other disciplines, to build critical thinking skills and develop a basic understanding of the world around you.

Everyone here has seen more fluorescent light bulbs in their lifetime then they could possibly count. But how many people could explain, in very basic terms, how one works? How about a television? Or a telephone? That's just amazing to me.
posted by Gamblor at 11:55 AM on July 28, 2005

A question for those who know these things: how quickly did this happen? Did it happen slowly or suddenly?
posted by Termite at 12:01 PM on July 28, 2005

I'll admit, I didn't try to be well-rounded - and if I had, it would have taken me more than my four-year degree to do so.

In college, because I was an English major (Psych minor, so some scientific discipline in there), I was only required to take two science courses and one math course. I placed low in math, and took a painfully easy class (much to my delight, as I'm horrible at it). The science I took was Geology (because it was non-threatening and I'm interested in it) and Biology. Biology was super hard, even though it was the general class, and I worked my ASS off in that class - I was hoping for a C, but ended up with a B because the final exam got screwed up and everyone was bumped up a letter grade.

I think you'll find that for a lot of us lacking in one of the many disciplines, it was because A) We don't have any interest in the subject, and/or B) it wasn't required of us to do more than was required.

Those two factors together ensured that I only took what I had to in order to graduate. Believe me, I happily filled in the rest of my schedule with Abnormal Psych and development classes, art (photography and history) and a huge healthy dose of my required and elective English and British literature courses as well as multiple poetry classes.

There are many paths to a degree - perhaps it should be more rounded, but I would have enjoyed my schooling a lot less.
posted by agregoli at 12:04 PM on July 28, 2005

Terminte how quickly did this happen

Depends on the ambient temperature. I'm guessing here, but once it reached a critical pressure and since the tank would be suffering from gradual fatigue, the initial collapse should be pretty quick, then it would slowly continue to cave in.

To all those people chiming up "It wasn't obvious to me," - are you proud of the fact that you don't know/don't care about basic physics/math/chem/bio/ whatever-those-scientimagicians dorks do?
posted by PurplePorpoise at 12:15 PM on July 28, 2005

Agreed, agregoli. Unless they're masochists, kids won't take difficult classes that aren't required.

I guess my point is that it seems like the bar has been set too low for the science requirements at most schools these days.
posted by Gamblor at 12:16 PM on July 28, 2005

To all those people chiming up "It wasn't obvious to me," - are you proud of the fact that you don't know/don't care about basic physics/math/chem/bio/ whatever-those-scientimagicians dorks do?

No, but I took exception to the idea that it was patentely obvious to everyone.

I don't have pride or shame about it. It simply is the way I am.
posted by agregoli at 12:21 PM on July 28, 2005

I think what I find annoying about the "it wasn't obvious" crowd isn't that it wasn't obvious to them, but that they wear their lack of knowledge with such pride. If you go up to a liberal arts major, and tell them that you know nothing about history, they become scandalized (and rightfully so), and inform you of the importance of a liberal arts education. However, when the situation is reversed, they proudly tell the physics majors that "they're not interested in that sort of thing". It isn't a matter even of taking classes in college. It's a matter of reading, and valuing the knowledge. I haven't taken a physics class since high school, and yet I can understand what happened with the tank car quite easily. It isn't a question of what classes you take. It's a matter of taking an interest in the quest for knowledge, even if it isn't in your field.
posted by unreason at 12:22 PM on July 28, 2005

And Gamblor - you're probably right.

In fact, I think the bar has been set too low for MOST disciplines in high school and college. I have a college teacher friend and I was shocked at some of the grammar mistakes and generally bad writing she told me about. Shocked to the point of - how did these kids ever get out of high school?
posted by agregoli at 12:22 PM on July 28, 2005

It's a matter of taking an interest in the quest for knowledge, even if it isn't in your field.

Wait, the "quest for knowledge" must include everything under the sun, even if you aren't interested in it and will never use the knowledge you acquire?

Dude, I find it hard to believe that you are interested in every single topic under the sun. I have a wide range of interests and math and physics aren't a part of that - what's wrong with that?

And as I said before your post, I'm not proud or ashamed of my lackings - I'm just not interested and I don't enjoy them. Why, especially now, as an adult out of school, would I study those? To make sure I'm on equal footing with people who are interested in it? Why?
posted by agregoli at 12:26 PM on July 28, 2005

Here's someone else with significant scientific training who probably wouldn't have thought to leave the valves and hatches open. Just wouldn't have occurred to me, but I can be sort of sloppy that way. Yeah, it's obvious in hindsight, but I totally understand how an educated, intelligent person would have missed the possibility beforehand. I think a lot of the Monday morning quarterbacks here might be overestimating their own care and foresight.

However, as an engineer, I will take the opportunity to be terribly condescending on one count: there should have been a standard operating procedure in place for the tank-cleaning protocol. In the process of developing a SOP, the engineers would have considered the potential for this problem, and would have explicitly included instructions to leave the valves open and considered the possibility of designing in negative-pressure relief valves. Not having a SOP in place is idiocy. Of course, if one was in place, and it was ignored, that's an entirely different kind of idiocy.

Gamblor writes "I mean, even though my degree was in science, and I used to be a researcher, I still have a working knowledge of literature, politics, geography, and history. I tried to be well-rounded. If someone mentions James Joyce or Mao Tse-Tung, I don't stare at them blankly, or shrug and say, 'That's history stuff.' But only the kids in Babylon 5 t-shirts with coke-bottle glasses learn any science? I don't get it."

I was just thinking about this yesterday.... I could not agree with you any more, Gamblor. And you've put it pretty well, too. There seems to be a certain arrogant parochialism among some students of the arts and humanities that simply isn't shared by scientists.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:28 PM on July 28, 2005

Gamblor: This will probably be interpreted as an insult, or as condescension, but I really don't mean it to come off that way. I'm just genuinely curious about how people can get a college degree (or even high school) and still not know the basics of physics, chemistry, or math.

Well, the Harvard study I mention offers some good clues as to why. The basic reasons behind misconceptions is that real-life experience tends to trump abstract reasoning. And about 99% of the time, real-life experience is a pretty good predictor of what is going to happen.

Now having said that, I think there are way too many claims that this was a problem with basic science literacy with a complete lack of evidence regarding exactly how this error occured. One of my best classes in college was from a guy who worked for NATO and the RAF looking at human performance, and he pointed out that expert pilots with hundreds of flight-time hours and an intimate understanding of the mechanics of flight and the high-performance machines they were operating made errors when they took basic routines for granted. Knowing better is no insurance that you will perform better.

To me, the "science" people making conclusions not supported by evidence is a more serious gap than not understanding the physical mechanisms behind this accident.

PurplePorpose: To all those people chiming up "It wasn't obvious to me," - are you proud of the fact that you don't know/don't care about basic physics/math/chem/bio/ whatever-those-scientimagicians dorks do?

Um, about half of the people chiming up that it wasn't obvious are basic physics/math/chem/bio literate.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:28 PM on July 28, 2005

Awesome pictures!

It must take some hours to clean one of those things, so I can imagine if I was lucky my mind might get around to thinking about it... There is nothing obvious about it until you already know - most science is like that.

Funny thing is, the people who think it was obvious are probably the first to praise 'individual genius' in the likes of Einstein and Newton. If 'genius' is truly rare and special, why should somebody cleaning a railroad tank car be required to have it?
posted by Chuckles at 12:30 PM on July 28, 2005

...how did these kids ever get out of high school?

Yep, I probably notice the science stuff more since it was my area of interest. That doesn't mean other subjects aren't lacking proper teaching, as well.

My experience has been that most every high school kid I've known has been just this side of retarded.
posted by Gamblor at 12:33 PM on July 28, 2005

mr_roboto: Of course, if one was in place, and it was ignored, that's an entirely different kind of idiocy.

Well, wasn't this why Murphy's law was developed? The fact that at some point during the system's history, SOP will be ignored, (or applied in a sloppy manner) leading to system failures?

I was just thinking about this yesterday.... I could not agree with you any more, Gamblor. And you've put it pretty well, too. There seems to be a certain arrogant parochialism among some students of the arts and humanities that simply isn't shared by scientists.

I don't know. I see lots of parochialism all around.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:33 PM on July 28, 2005

Why, especially now, as an adult out of school, would I study those? To make sure I'm on equal footing with people who are interested in it? Why?

Ok, no math and physics.

When a politician tells you that there's no such thing as global warming, how do you know he's lying?

When the evening news tells you statistics about people who drink diet soda weighing more, how will you judge the value of that study?

When an activist tells you that the oil's running out and shows you a peak distribution curve, what's he talking about?

When an economist tells you that social security isn't stable because of population adjustments, how can you evaluate his claims?

When someone tells you that the world can survive on solar power, is he an idealist, or a realist?

Math and science aren't something done only in labs by guys in white coats. It's part of life. And if you don't understand those subjects, you won't understand what's going on. The "quest for knowledge" doesn't need to include everything , but it should include the basics that you need to understand our world. That includes literature, to understand our culture. It means history, to understand the course of civilizations, and it also includes math and science, to understand how the world works.
posted by unreason at 12:34 PM on July 28, 2005

Hey - unreason (great name!)

just because I don't have enough of a grasp of physics to understand or CARE about the reasons behind this tank car implosion (I think it's mildy interesting, mostly for the pictures) doesn't mean I can't understand your examples or that I'm willfully ignorant of science.

Man, it's all or nothing with you, huh?

Yeah, you're right. I can't possibly understand any of those examples you posted. /sarcasm
posted by agregoli at 12:37 PM on July 28, 2005

Purple Porpois: Depends on the ambient temperature. I'm guessing here, but once it reached a critical pressure and since the tank would be suffering from gradual fatigue, the initial collapse should be pretty quick, then it would slowly continue to cave in.

Maybe... Once the initial collapse gets past a certain point there are bound to be ruptures. Depending on how leak phobic the designers were I guess you could imagine it is possible that it got to the state we see in the pictures without a rupture, but that seems unlikely at first glance.
posted by Chuckles at 12:38 PM on July 28, 2005

unreason: Well, I think the answer to all of those questions is the same for both non-scientists and scientists reading outside their field, a blind trust (or distrust) in authority. The ability of any single person to properly evaluate research in any field of science vanished almost a century ago.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:38 PM on July 28, 2005

I'm just genuinely curious about how people can get a college degree (or even high school) and still not know the basics of physics, chemistry, or math.

In college, there's (usually) not much for the just curious. There are intro X-For-Idiots classes that go so far out of their way to avoid math that they end up teaching fuck-all. And there are classes for majors that are often forthrightly and directly described as weed-outs.

But there's not usually much for someone who's curious, and wants to learn about it, and is willing to do some problem sets and maybe a lab or two, but has zero intention of majoring in the field (or any physical science) and zero intention of moving into a science career. There's no Scientific American-plus level of college science courses. Usually.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:40 PM on July 28, 2005 [1 favorite]

My experience has been that most every high school kid I've known has been just this side of retarded.

Full disclosure: I'd put myself squarely in that camp, as well.

MetaFilter: Just this side of retarded
posted by Gamblor at 12:45 PM on July 28, 2005

Not to derail (get it?) this thread on education, I'm one of those surprised that it hasn't happened before. The government regulations for what "empty" means are quite loose, so there are lots of supposedly empty tank cars (and trailers) with a significant amount of product still in them. Though I like to think the chemical companies and carriers know what they're doing, I can't help feel we've just been lucky.
posted by tommasz at 12:45 PM on July 28, 2005

Gamblor writes "I'm just genuinely curious about how people can get a college degree (or even high school) and still not know the basics of physics, chemistry, or math."

I think most of your point is very well put, but I think that those who've said that they wouldn't have suspected that this would happen are a wide enough mix that it's clear the problem is not a lack of basic education, but of application. There are a host of differences in what it means to be well-rounded and how one applies that knowledge in any given situation. Knowing basic physics, or even fairly advanced physics as many posters profess, is no guarantee against making the mistake made here.

That being said, I think the question of what constitutes "basic education" is an open one. For math, is geometry basic (yes, it's used all the time by average people in day to day life), is calculus? Is knowing who James Joyce is and what he wrote basic? Is reading Ulysses basic? What's comparable to reading Ulysses in physics education?
posted by OmieWise at 12:46 PM on July 28, 2005

KirkJobSluder writes "Well, wasn't this why Murphy's law was developed?"

Total tangent, here, 'cause it's an interesting story: The origin of Murphy's law.

The fact that at some point during the system's history, SOP will be ignored, (or applied in a sloppy manner) leading to system failures?

Yep; this is just good engineering. It's also one of the benefits of coming up with SOPs. Imagine the tank car engineers sitting down and writing up a SOP for cleaning the car. They get to the last step, and suddenly realize that if the hot car is sealed up, it might collapse. At which point they start to think of engineering solutions to the problem: relief valves, temperature sensors, alarms, hell, simple warning placards. The SOP provides instructions for the process, but it also provides a framework for thinking analytically about the engineering implications of each step in the process.

"I don't know. I see lots of parochialism all around."

Really? I mean, I've got only anecdotes, but all the scientists I know seems so well-rounded, with good basic knowledge of all the liberal arts. When it comes to non-scientists, though, lots of them seem to care nothing about science, and to have no shame about their lack of knowledge. Again, this is just anecdotal personal experience; I'd be curious to know if your experience differs.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:48 PM on July 28, 2005

To all those people chiming up "It wasn't obvious to me," - are you proud of the fact that you don't know/don't care about basic physics/math/chem/bio/ whatever-those-scientimagicians dorks do?

No, actually I have a fairly solid knowledge of math and physics (though I'll admit that I never took chem or bio at any serious level). I knew that negative pressure would result, I just overestimated the strength of the vessel under that particular set of forces.

I suggest you find better things to get upset about in the future.
posted by mosch at 12:51 PM on July 28, 2005

I had a bunch of thoughts, but most of them could be summed up by, "what unreason said." Too many people substitute their fuzzy "character judgments" of the person making the argument ("he seemed so confident! and he seems like such a nice person!") because they aren't able to evaluate the reasoning and data of the argument itself.
posted by deanc at 12:55 PM on July 28, 2005

In high school, I learned to analyze short stories for such things as plot, theme, characters, etc. I never dreamed those same elements could be analyzed in novels!!

You say you're out of high school, then?

It would be easy, even for someone who applied their scientific education to every such situation in their life (a highly impractical method), to overestimate the strength of the rail car's walls against the negative pressure of the condensing steam. Things like these are usually only obvious to people who have either seen it happen or write it down on paper.

There seems to be a certain arrogant parochialism among some students of the arts and humanities that simply isn't shared by scientists.

I reckon that that's because of the stigma against science education that seems to be instilled in students from a very young age. A good number of the students who aren't scared away are probably eager to learn in whatever field. Unfortunately, a lot of people who would be eager science students are dissuaded by cultural prejudices (i.e., women in science) or the admonitions of others that science is more difficult than the other subjects.
posted by invitapriore at 12:55 PM on July 28, 2005

I spent a year teaching classes for a college offering Associates degrees. I don't know how many of you have those, or what your experiences are, but the requirements leaned heavily on the "Arts" side and most of the "Science" side was left as a choice (no biology, chem, physics required and only remedial math). I teach biology and they ended up not having a class big enough for me to teach the following year. I ended up teaching more English classes than science classes for them.
posted by Moral Animal at 12:56 PM on July 28, 2005

I don't buy it. The pressure loss would have affected the weakest parts - i.e. the doors, or the shutoff valves - before destroying the integrity of the tank.
posted by iamck at 12:59 PM on July 28, 2005

Man, I am so hiring Dr. Slime to design my next site. Top 5% of the Web!
posted by Edible Energy at 1:04 PM on July 28, 2005

What's comparable to reading Ulysses in physics education?

I realize this is mostly a rhetorical exercise, and I'm not a physics professor, but most everything from Holt's table of contents would form a pretty sound foundation in physics, whcih is why it's a popular textbook. Two semesters seems like the norm to complete it.

At the very least, Newtonian motion, light, magnetism, electricity, and maybe basic atomic physics. It doesn't even need to be drenched in math.
posted by Gamblor at 1:08 PM on July 28, 2005

Gamblor-
I'd say you're about right, and perhaps you've read Ulysses, but the number of scientists I know (the # of people I know) who have is quite low. Although I've both read Ulysses and have an understanding of all the things you listed, my point is that reading Ulysses is actually beyond the range of well-rounded.
posted by OmieWise at 1:21 PM on July 28, 2005

iamck: I don't buy it. The pressure loss would have affected the weakest parts - i.e. the doors, or the shutoff valves - before destroying the integrity of the tank.

In my memory of a misspent youth hiking through rail yards, these parts are usually reinforced because they bear the mechanical weight of loading/unloading. Sharp corners and edges are weak points in a pressure vessel, and are almost always reinforced beyond need.

And yeah, I have a Mircobiology B.S. behind my name, and I don't find this to be an especially obvious application of the physics I had.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:40 PM on July 28, 2005

There seems to be a certain arrogant parochialism among some students of the arts and humanities that simply isn't shared by scientists.

all the scientists I know seems so well-rounded, with good basic knowledge of all the liberal arts. When it comes to non-scientists, though, lots of them seem to care nothing about science, and to have no shame about their lack of knowledge.

See, I have the opposite experience. I was an English major at a college with a really strong natural sciences program (I also took way more science classes --including labs -- than I was required to). I always found that the humanities kids' interest in science and the science kids' interest in the humanities was about equal, but with two big differences:

(1) The science majors all seemed pretty arrogant themselves about their interest in the arts and humanities, as though they deserved some kind of special recognition for deigning to study the non-scientifical subjects. I don't know where this came from, but I do know I'm not the only one who noticed it.

(2) Whenever there were academic events (like lectures and roundtables) advertised around campus, those centering around the arts and humanities were always very jargon-free and aimed at a general audience, while the science-related events were usually more esoteric, aimed at people already extremely familiar with a given field. Whenever I went to a public lecture on geology or whatever, my head was swimming by the end.

This isn't to say that I think science should be dumbed down for us humanities kids, but there is a degree of jargon and inside references I think could be left back in the lab. I think it'd be easy for someone to say, well, people with scientific minds are just smarter and more well-rounded, but I think saying so would be rather... unscientific.
posted by hifiparasol at 2:05 PM on July 28, 2005

hifiparasol: I can't remember the last chemical engineering seminar I went to that would have been the least bit useful to us if we'd rendered it mostly free of jargon for a liberal arts crowd.

That said, let me agree with many of the posters above--my fellow classmates are consistently interested in everything, not just science (most people think I'm a literature major or something)--I don't know any liberal arts student who could say the same...
posted by hototogisu at 2:09 PM on July 28, 2005

I worked at a manufacturing plant where the same thing happened. Someone was emptying a car loaded with plastic pellets with a vacuum hose. They left the vacuum on and the whole car imploaded. Evidently those cars are designed for great stress pushing out from within, and totally not designed for great strees pulling in.
posted by thisisdrew at 2:26 PM on July 28, 2005

I can't remember the last chemical engineering seminar I went to that would have been the least bit useful to us if we'd rendered it mostly free of jargon for a liberal arts crowd.

Yeah, but aren't chemical engineering seminars aimed mostly at chemical engineering students? I'm talking about events that were advertised campuswide, thus encouraging everyone to come.

I know plenty of liberal arts students who are interested in science. I've taught several of them. But for them, I find, being interested in science is fun for its own sake, rather than for the sake of comparing themselves favorably to scientists who aren't interested in the liberal arts.

Which -- not to sound bitchy or anything -- seems to be the mood of a lot of scientists I talk to whenever this topic comes up.
posted by hifiparasol at 2:32 PM on July 28, 2005

I skipped the second half of the comments, but... I used to work for the company that built that car (tho it was before my time). The vacuum (negative pressure) wasn't all that great, maybe a few PSI...but the surface are is immense. On the middle one foot or the tank you've got pi*12*120 (the diameter) * the vacuum pressure - say, 5psi. That's 22,000 pounds of crushing force. And contrary to the website, it's not elementary physics but Engineering Mechanics III (deformable bodies) that teaches that alllwable crush load on a hoop is much less that allowable outward hoop stress.
posted by notsnot at 2:38 PM on July 28, 2005

ahhh, I see what you mean. Not what I was thinking at all. Nevermind then!

Then again, my fellows and I don't tend to have too much trouble parsing the jargon at the more hard-core liberal arts lectures we crash--I don't think we ever have non-engineers come to ours.
posted by hototogisu at 2:50 PM on July 28, 2005

hototoqisu said: I don't know any liberal arts students.

Fixed your post.
posted by mosch at 3:02 PM on July 28, 2005

notsnot: fantastic post.
posted by mosch at 3:06 PM on July 28, 2005

I stand corrected. (I suppose that's why we have vent filters on the 316 SS tanks we steam at my job (I smell an experiment!)
posted by iamck at 3:23 PM on July 28, 2005

Gamblor, there's nothing inevitable about the high math ignorance and near-total science ignorance of a typical liberal arts and social science graduate in the U.S. or Europe.

It reflects the fact that the norms of Western education were set in the 18th and 19th century, when few people received higher education and serious technical education took place on the job. Higher education was, in the main, intended to enlighten the upper classes, who (in their own way) learned on the job (as lawyers or farm owners) or who lived lives of leisure.

In places where the norms of higher education are more recent, it's pretty much unthinkable to graduate college without a sound math and science background. In India, for example, science and engineering are the default undergraduate curriculum for better students, to the extent that science-and-engineering only schools comprise the entire elite group of colleges (imagine if the Ivy League comprised solely of MIT and Cal Tech) and a B.A. degree (in any liberal arts discipline) isn't even really regarded as a college degree at all in the job market.
posted by MattD at 3:26 PM on July 28, 2005

MattD: Do you really believe that a non-math/science Ivy League degree should be considered worthless in the job market?
posted by mosch at 3:47 PM on July 28, 2005

Wanna help this lady figure out the opposite of the imploding soft drink problem?
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 2:13 PM EST on July 28

I'd bet that this is from a combination of the heat induced pressure (In a sealed car, temperature can hit 65 deg C) and supersaturation type behavior, where the gas is dissolved beyond the solubility limit. As the can cools and the car shakes it, the gas comes out of solution and expands. That plus the already high pressure from the hot conditions caused a failure at the weakest part of the can, the seal.
posted by apathy0o0 at 4:08 PM on July 28, 2005

mosch: that was funny. Actually, it wasn't funny, and coupled with the misspelling of my name, was actually kind of stupid. Cheers!
posted by hototogisu at 4:09 PM on July 28, 2005

the opposite of the imploding soft drink problem

I learned this the hard way a few weeks ago, when I left a can of soda in my car during one of the east coast's more dreadful heat waves.

Took quite a bit of Armor-All to clean up the results...

hoto, fair enough.
posted by hifiparasol at 4:20 PM on July 28, 2005

As a business undergrad major, I don't care about science or humanities. If I need to know one of those learny thing, I'll pay someone to tell me the answer.
posted by mullacc at 4:49 PM on July 28, 2005

In a sealed car, temperature can hit 65 deg C

Wasn't there a thread on here not too long ago mocking people who researched car temperatures? See who has the wet upholstry now!
posted by thedevildancedlightly at 5:04 PM on July 28, 2005

I've been steaming bioreactors for about the last 15 years and I've never seen anything like this happen. I've worked with vessels from 40 to 15000 liters and there have been many instances of people forgetting to leave valves open or a wet venting filter preventing a tank from breathing.
I heard you can collapse a vessel if you let chilled glycol into the jacket while it's freshly steamed, but I've never seen it done.
We typically steam at about 125 degrees C. Who knows what these guys were using but I can't imagine it was that hot if they were able to stand inside the vessel while they were doing it. That reminds me. OSHA would take a dim view of allowing people to perform that task without first being trained on confined entry procedures.
Apparently the tanks we use in the pharmaceutical industry are a hell of a lot stronger those used by the railroads.
posted by reidfleming at 5:45 PM on July 28, 2005

reidfleming - I'm in Purf, and we do quite the same (maybe we're coworkers!). As for the glycol, I can vouch that won't do anything (although I probably shouldn't have done that...)
posted by iamck at 6:12 PM on July 28, 2005

Just as a follow-up, these links also reference the accident. I tried to find more info about the proper procedures or how they were ignored here, but either google, my google-fu, or the paltry amount of time I devoted to finding it let me down.

http://www.hanford.gov/lessons/sitell/ll01/2001-18.htm
http://sunny16.photo.tntech.edu/~richard/Freightcars/archive/0211.html
posted by caddis at 7:02 PM on July 28, 2005

I would have loved to have heard what it sounded like

Exactly what I thought, anyone remember the creaking noises in Das Boot?
posted by scheptech at 7:23 PM on July 28, 2005

hototoqsa: You're right, there are no intellectually curious people with backgrounds in languages, history, the arts, communication, social work, or business.

The only intellectually curious people in the world are in math and science programs.
posted by mosch at 7:26 PM on July 28, 2005

This is in the chapter on Thermodynamics in my College Physics Textbook. I'm kind of surprised to see it making its rounds online over a year after it showed up on the printed page.
posted by Hactar at 7:30 PM on July 28, 2005

Well, color me profoundly unconvinced as to this broad open-minded science undergraduate thing. Perhaps it comes from doing biology, but the competition for grad school or medical school didn't leave much room for liberal arts. The B.S. involved half the foreign language, half the arts and humanties, and only one writing class compared to the B.A.. Add in a rather harsh competitive workload and an expectation to do undergraduate research internships, and you had a host of people who spent their weekdays in the library, and their weekends getting blitzed.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:52 PM on July 28, 2005

From the site:

Don't even ask me which Fortune 500 Company had this occur, I can't tell you. It was part of the agreement I made to get the these pictures.

Well, he should have blurred out the reporting marks (the lettering on the side and ends of the car that identify the owner), then:

AGEX - A. G. Pipe Lines, Inc.; Nova Chemicals, Ltd.

Wonder if I'll get in trouble :)
posted by pjern at 8:16 PM on July 28, 2005

Damn trainspotters.
posted by caddis at 8:32 PM on July 28, 2005

Notsnot nailed the physics/engineering. However, to understand it better, realize that at the point where the hatches are attached to the tubular shell, there is a natural "kink" in the circle. That discontinuity acts like a fold on a piece of paper - it is the weakest point and will permit crushing at much lower pressure than the tubular skin. Once the deformation begins, it proceeds ever more rapidly as more folds appear.

As for the argument that anyone with an ounce of physics should have foreseen this problem I would like to point out that it would only be recognized as such if it were suspected. Most people have very little, if any, experience with large changes in air pressure apart from sticking one's hand out the car window to feel the "wind". The forces involved seem miniscule when compared with the apparent strength of 7/16" steel. So it would not occur to most of us that we should consider how much force that a bit of air pressure differential actually exerts when applied to the enormous surface area of the tank car. And even if we did think to calculate the surface area of the car and from that the applied pressure, who among us would know what the strength of 7/16" steel is?

To compound the issue mentioned in the preceding para, most of us would recognize a strong parallel between a tank car and a submarine, at least in their shapes. We have learned of the enormous pressures that submarines will withstand and project that onto the tank car. It takes a pretty sophisticated physicist or engineer to recognize that the submarine is not a simple tube, but something of an ellipsoid. The continuous curvature of the sides lend enormous strength against outside pressure. The flat sides of the tank car lack that curvature, with the consequence that they are more easily deformed. To intuit this point, consider how much more load a bridge which is built as an arch can carry than a bridge which is a simple beam spanning two supports.
posted by RMALCOLM at 9:13 PM on July 28, 2005

mosque: well, you're worth spending all kinds of time on, aren't you lil' guy? So cute!

Perhaps I should make a correction to what I said above, because context clearly isn't working: there are lots of liberal arts people interested in lots of things. I'm sure there are. I'm not thinking about the literature student interested in philosophy. I'm thinking about the literature student interested in science beyond what he or she could read in the NYT science section. I sure don't know any, maybe you do. However, I can think of lots of fellow engineers busy *also* studying 20th century music composition, or *also* getting degrees in Spanish literature. If you have a problem with my *personal* experiences, then I don' t know what to tell you. It's certainly your problem, not mine.

KirkJobSluder: I'm not generalizing, it's just been my experience. I should also add that I'm talking about engineering, which is even more over-the-top than most of the science programs where I go to school. Maybe it draws a different kind of person--maybe I just have a disproportionate number of interesting friends. Or maybe I just know lots of stupid liberal arts students. I think all three are likely true.
posted by hototogisu at 9:14 PM on July 28, 2005

Wow, this thread exploded.

I'm sorry about being mean asking if people were (seemingly) proud of scientific ignorance. Especially as someone else much more elegantly that there *are* students who are exactly the opposite, I'll concede yet another downfall of being a liberal arts student - I just didn't have to spend time with (science only) people who *didn't* care about the humanities, and those that were - I didn't make friends with them.

It was a kneejerk (and drunken) response, I apoligize. It would never have happened if I was high on marijuana.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 9:49 PM on July 28, 2005

hototogisu: You're not simply talking about your personal experiences. Your posts imply that you're talking about a general truth. Denying this is just an absurd way of avoiding the fact that you're being extraordinarily arrogant.
posted by mosch at 10:59 PM on July 28, 2005

correction: your earlier posts make that implication... your latter post is an attempt to weasel out of that position, perhaps because you realized that it's asinine, easily disprovable and incredibly offensive.
posted by mosch at 11:02 PM on July 28, 2005

hototogisu: I didn't say you were generalizing, in fact, I didn't direct my message to you at all.

IME there are plenty of factors on both sides behind the arts/sciences divide. On the one side, you have a neo-romantic ideology that is profoundly skeptical of modernism. On the other side, you have a strong tendency towards elitism that sometimes responds to professed ignorance and questions with "are you an idiot for not knowing that?"
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:38 AM on July 29, 2005

Science!
posted by Ynoxas at 9:58 AM on July 29, 2005

inside: More info on collapsed Tank Cars

I love the internet.
posted by StickyCarpet at 1:17 PM on July 30, 2005