Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Chuck here. I hope you're having a good Saturday. Uh.
Speaker 1: This week I selected for the select episode a great
Speaker 1: one from August eight, two thousand twelve, How does a
Speaker 1: Diving Bell Work? And I think if you've listened to
Speaker 1: the show before, you know I love antiquated equipment and
Speaker 1: steam punky things, and all of that together is a
Speaker 1: diving bell. So I just picked this one out because
Speaker 1: I remember it being a good one, So please to
Speaker 1: enjoy How does a Diving Bell Work? Right now, welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant is with me. Um,
Speaker 1: which means it's time for Stuff you should Know. That's right, man,
Speaker 1: I got all confused right there, you're about to say
Speaker 1: a listener, it was a little close for comfort, our
Speaker 1: shortest show ever. Yes, how introductions work? How you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm well, sir? How are you? I'm good. It's a
Speaker 1: little warm in here today in that um, I feel
Speaker 1: I feel like this is to him like a room
Speaker 1: that we're in is always sort of warming off putting. Well,
Speaker 1: there's like eighteen Nikea lamps in here, and I guess
Speaker 1: it feels like it's warmer than usual. They generate some
Speaker 1: heat and that's how they power Switzerland, Sweden with heats Sweden, Sweden. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: sorry Swedish. Yeah. I know. People are like, good lord, Chuck,
Speaker 1: Yeah you got a map as a desk. They're like
Speaker 1: skipping diving bells. Yeah, you have a tan map down too,
Speaker 1: so um Chuck. Yes, I want to dive into a
Speaker 1: subject that I believe you know something about. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: called diving bells. That's the subject, and I know you
Speaker 1: know about it because this article that we're basing this
Speaker 1: off of is a Chuck Bryant jam. Yeah. I forgot
Speaker 1: all about this and then got about halfway through it,
Speaker 1: and I was like, that sounds like something i'd say, Oh, really,
Speaker 1: you didn't realize that you'd written. Nope, totally forgot and
Speaker 1: then it wasn't halfway through, but it was probably somewhere
Speaker 1: in the intro, wasn't you said that silly clever intro
Speaker 1: which was really not clever. Oh? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: feel like I used to start all of my articles
Speaker 1: like I was writing a middle school term paper. Oh
Speaker 1: was it the uh where they're talking about how there's
Speaker 1: not very many images of our early attempts to scuba
Speaker 1: dive because quote of the lack of availability of underwater
Speaker 1: filming techniques at the time. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like
Speaker 1: filler very very very very very remember in summer school
Speaker 1: with Chainsaw and Dave. Uh yeah, the Mark Harman movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had to write like a three word essay or
Speaker 1: something like that, and somebody they admired and I think
Speaker 1: it was Toby Hooper and oh yeah, or was the
Speaker 1: or a special effects guy. But they said like he
Speaker 1: was very very very very very very very remember those
Speaker 1: days counting the words? Yeah, that's not what this is. No,
Speaker 1: this is a great article on diving bells. It's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting, you know, the precursor to scuba diving. If
Speaker 1: any you folks out there, scuba enthusiasts you have, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a trail that was blazed many years before,
Speaker 1: littered with dead bodies and big iron casks. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: not just dead bodies, but crippled bodies too. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of bad stuff can happen to you, and a
Speaker 1: lot of bad stuff did happen to people before. We
Speaker 1: really understood the physics of Yeah, I mean people still
Speaker 1: lose their lives obviously in the pursuit of um, just
Speaker 1: forwarding technology, but um, not like they used to people.
Speaker 1: You're like, we really owe a debt to the people
Speaker 1: who figured out everything that we have and lost their
Speaker 1: lives doing it. Well, what's spectacularly amazing to me is
Speaker 1: that not everyone died trying to use diving bells. And
Speaker 1: we're talking like years ago. Yeah, it wasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: the early right, Yeah, Yeah, apparently by the hundred's the
Speaker 1: concept of diving bells were so I guess entrenched in
Speaker 1: societies around the world, civilizations around the world that they
Speaker 1: were just routinely used for all sorts of different stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Aristotle wrote about it, Yeah, back in the fourth century BC. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a long time ago, so he was he was
Speaker 1: the first, I take it, to mention diving bells or
Speaker 1: to describe them, right. Yeah. Should we read that quote?
Speaker 1: I think it's a good quote, but you have to
Speaker 1: read it in an aristotele voice. Aristotelean, Um, well, I
Speaker 1: really have no idea what ancient Greeks sounded like. Well,
Speaker 1: the key is that no one does, so you can
Speaker 1: just make it up. They enable divers to respire equally
Speaker 1: well by letting down a cauldron, for this does not
Speaker 1: fill with water, but retains the air, for it is
Speaker 1: forced straight down into the vatas I just added a German. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was going say there was an eighty five percent
Speaker 1: chance that the Greeks were gonna sound like Sean Connery
Speaker 1: coming out of you. Ah. Yeah, that wasn't Sean Connery,
Speaker 1: it um. So Yeah, so Aristotle is talking about this,
Speaker 1: and the very fact that he's talking about diving bells
Speaker 1: proves at least that the idea was in place at
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, there's some legends that, um, Alexander the Great,
Speaker 1: who was actually a student of Aristotle's, used a diving bell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's pictures drawings of you know, Alexander the Great
Speaker 1: like laying down or sitting down beneath the water in
Speaker 1: some sort of a you know, diving bell or or
Speaker 1: like a barrel or magic bubble or some Sorry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we don't know if that means he just talked
Speaker 1: about it a lot and like draw pictures of me
Speaker 1: doing this, or if they actually tried it. Um, We're
Speaker 1: just not sure. Well, so supposedly he used it one
Speaker 1: when he was eleven, but then again as an older
Speaker 1: man during the Siege of Tire in a three thirty
Speaker 1: two b c Um And I looked that up and
Speaker 1: it looked like it seems pretty reasonable, Like apparently there
Speaker 1: is some underwater obstructions around Tire and he had some
Speaker 1: underwater divers removing him, so he used a diving bell
Speaker 1: to go check on their work. Not the most fantastical
Speaker 1: tail anyone could tell if they were just making stuff
Speaker 1: up about him using a diving bell. So I kind
Speaker 1: of buy that one, Yeah, I could buy it. And
Speaker 1: of course da Vinci sketched them out because he invented everything.
Speaker 1: Even if he didn't properly invented, he at least sketched
Speaker 1: out ideas. You know, well, yeah, he had a lot
Speaker 1: of great ideas that have come to life now. The
Speaker 1: Star Trek phaser really okay. But Aristotle he kind of
Speaker 1: hints at the basic physics behind a diving bell. He
Speaker 1: says that you have a capsule that you're forcing straight
Speaker 1: down into a water the water and um, the air bubble,
Speaker 1: whatever air was inside, is pressed upwards so long as
Speaker 1: the vessel is concave, right, Yeah, and so long as
Speaker 1: it is straight down. Like said, you don't want this
Speaker 1: thing because you know, if you've ever played in the bathtub,
Speaker 1: and I know you do, you know if you take
Speaker 1: a cup and invert it and just push it straight down,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be water. And then if you want to
Speaker 1: make make it poop, you tilted on its side and
Speaker 1: the air comes out in little bubbles. That's true. You know,
Speaker 1: does a poop or shoot a duck? It shoots a duck.
Speaker 1: But I think every kid has done stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and that's essentially what all a diving bell is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just really heavy. Yeah, because when you have a
Speaker 1: cup above water upside down has air in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when it contacts the water, the air can escape any
Speaker 1: longer because of the water surface tension. And then when
Speaker 1: you push it up, the water compresses the air. That's right.
Speaker 1: So that's all you have. Like you said, at the
Speaker 1: top of a diving bell, inside is compressed air and
Speaker 1: human beings can breathe that. Yeah. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be concave though, does it. I don't think so. But
Speaker 1: the square later I think, well, I think there needs
Speaker 1: to be some sort of point that the air can
Speaker 1: be pressed up into but maybe not. Okay, I've seen
Speaker 1: here they're concave, so maybe that's the best design for
Speaker 1: a diving bell, but yeah, not everybody's used concave designs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean many were shaped like bells. Some were
Speaker 1: barrels like whiskey barrels, um somewhere wooden, many were iron um,
Speaker 1: there were They were trying all sorts of things basically
Speaker 1: just to see if it worked right, and they figured
Speaker 1: out like, the heavier the better, because this thing had
Speaker 1: to be able to go down to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the sea, whatever depth that was and not tip over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it couldn't tip over. And it had to be balanced too,
Speaker 1: so you had to have ballasts. If you weren't using
Speaker 1: an iron diving bellet, you had to put weights on
Speaker 1: it and they had to be balanced or else it
Speaker 1: would tip over. It was a big deal. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think the key here is this is breathable air,
Speaker 1: right like um. It depends on how deep you are
Speaker 1: and how big your bell is, obviously, but I think
Speaker 1: one example, like even here, was if you have a
Speaker 1: tin foot tall bell down, that's only about eleven inches
Speaker 1: of air. Um, that's not enough. Now, I don't think
Speaker 1: they were going that deep back then, or at least
Speaker 1: they were not smart to do. So, no, those are
Speaker 1: the ones that died, that's right. So one of the
Speaker 1: other problems that these people faced aside from dying because
Speaker 1: they went too deep and ended up with just eleven
Speaker 1: inches of air. Now we should point out that before
Speaker 1: we go any further physically speaking, that that's a by volume,
Speaker 1: that's eleven inches of air, but that's still the same
Speaker 1: amount of air that filled up the diving bell above water.
Speaker 1: So right, it's compressed, so you have compressed there. So
Speaker 1: all those oxygen molecules are still there, they're just in
Speaker 1: compressed form. Yeah. The problem is if you're in there,
Speaker 1: you're compressed too, right, and when you're in that state
Speaker 1: of compression, um, the oxygen and the nitrogen in your
Speaker 1: blood stream get compressed as well, that's right, and they dissolve,
Speaker 1: which isn't a problem with the oxygen because the tissues
Speaker 1: surrounding tissues absorbed that auction and they love it. It's
Speaker 1: like yummy to them. But the nitrogen remains dissolved in
Speaker 1: the blood until you decompress. Then you have a problem. Yes,
Speaker 1: then you have a radio Head album. Do they have
Speaker 1: one called the bens. Yeah, I didn't know that. It's
Speaker 1: a great one. It was the one that preceded. Okay,
Speaker 1: computer did they make a bad album ever? No, that's
Speaker 1: a good point. Yeah, that's what the bens is, and
Speaker 1: that can um when the when the nitrogen uh tries
Speaker 1: to escape, it forms little bubbles that block blood vessels.
Speaker 1: And that's why you can have a stroke or a
Speaker 1: heart attack if you ascend too quickly, and it can
Speaker 1: go to your joints and cause excruciating pain. I imagine crippling.
Speaker 1: Remember I mentioned being crippled before. Yeah, you've suffered the bens. No,
Speaker 1: don't know. Earlier I said, like you said, that's littered
Speaker 1: with dead bodies and sit and crippled bodies. I feel
Speaker 1: like we talked about my my lifelong crippling. Well, momentarily,
Speaker 1: I thought you meant I never had the bens. Okay,
Speaker 1: I thought I remembered many moons ago you mentioning Scooba
Speaker 1: diving something about the bens. I've never had the bends. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: poor Scuba Cat if he'd gotten the bens. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Wonder Scooba Cat still around. I don't know. Who's kind
Speaker 1: of old already? Wasn't he. I don't remember, boy, that
Speaker 1: was a winner of our best So uh yeah, when
Speaker 1: you come up too quickly, the nitrogen in your blood undissolves,
Speaker 1: forms bubbles, blocks your blood vessels, blocks your joints, causes
Speaker 1: tremendous pain, strokes, death, all that stuff. Right, So when
Speaker 1: you're an ancient bell diver, I guess is what you call?
Speaker 1: Is that right? A bell diver seems right? Um? And
Speaker 1: you were down for very long, too deep, and you
Speaker 1: came up too quickly, You're in a lot of trouble,
Speaker 1: that's right. And they may not have even understood the
Speaker 1: bens at that point. Imagine they didn't. They're like, he
Speaker 1: just got the diving bell sickness again. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: because he sinned or something like that. He upset zeus.
Speaker 1: So things when I went on like this for quite
Speaker 1: a while, Um, through the Renaissance into the sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: people were using these diving bells. It was all well
Speaker 1: and good. They were having a blast down there, having parties.
Speaker 1: And then at some point people were like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I bet we could make this better, right. You know,
Speaker 1: these guys keep running out of air down there and dying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: or they run out of air and they have to
Speaker 1: come up too quick and they get the ben So
Speaker 1: how can we improve this? Or they're only fourteen feet
Speaker 1: down sitting in a bell, then what's the point which
Speaker 1: is magnificent but the ship that we need to get
Speaker 1: to is a hundred feet down. Yeah, exactly, like they
Speaker 1: needed this. They wanted to have applications they could use
Speaker 1: like two build things or repair things or get you know,
Speaker 1: pirates booty exactly. And speaking of pirates, check Sparrow does
Speaker 1: this with a canoe in the first um Pirates of
Speaker 1: the Caribbean. Yes, really, Yeah, he turns a canoe upside
Speaker 1: down and like walks along the ocean bottom. And I
Speaker 1: don't remember how he pulls the canoe down. Technically speaking,
Speaker 1: it's possible if he pulled it straight down. I think
Speaker 1: the magic of Disney, but I don't think it's it's
Speaker 1: physically possible what he did. Just just want to make
Speaker 1: sure that anybody who really liked that part, I pooh
Speaker 1: poo it. Okay, so uh. In the late sixteen undreds
Speaker 1: it was a Frenchman named Dennis Pepine and um, he
Speaker 1: was one of the first dudes that said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think we can get some fresh air into there,
Speaker 1: and very smartly and simply he used hoses and bellows
Speaker 1: that you know, the bellows were outside obviously up on
Speaker 1: you know, the boat, and they had dudes manning the
Speaker 1: bellows and pumping fresh air in there. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't even like difficult. You didn't even have to navigate
Speaker 1: like where to put the hole in the top of
Speaker 1: the diving The hose literally just goes under the bottom
Speaker 1: and up inside, and then the air just presses up
Speaker 1: super easy. Yeah, so you've got fresh air now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they can stay down there longer, that's all that's off basically,
Speaker 1: But it's still not pressurized. The air they're pumping in
Speaker 1: isn't pressurized, that's true. So they couldn't go any deeper.
Speaker 1: They could just stay down there and do whatever the
Speaker 1: heck they were doing sitting in these cast iron bells. Right,
Speaker 1: So we we invent diving bells and at least the
Speaker 1: fifth century be See, we have to wait until this
Speaker 1: century a d before we make a real innovation to them.
Speaker 1: Now we have a whole other obstacle pressurizing these things.
Speaker 1: How long do we have to wait to overcome that?
Speaker 1: One a year? That's true? Uh, And it took an
Speaker 1: Englishman to do so, Edmund halle Um. He basically attached
Speaker 1: these wooden barrels, he's weighted wooden barrels to the diving
Speaker 1: bell and they could be brought up and down, and
Speaker 1: they contained air. At the bottom of each of these
Speaker 1: as a whole. Uh, that allowed water to come in,
Speaker 1: forcing the air up. And at the top was a
Speaker 1: hose that ran from that barrel to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the diving bell, and there was a faucet. So basically
Speaker 1: whenever it was it was sort of like having air
Speaker 1: tanks down there. Whenever they wanted um more pressure, you know,
Speaker 1: if they were trying to equalize things, they would just
Speaker 1: turn their little faucet and allow air in. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: once the barrel was empty, they would pull the barrels up,
Speaker 1: um I guess refill them with air, which probably meant
Speaker 1: just opening the top and then closing it again it's
Speaker 1: filled up, and then lower it back down there and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you could control the pressure. And
Speaker 1: that was the same um Hallie who named a comment
Speaker 1: after himself. It was no way that guy was all
Speaker 1: over the place renaissance man. Yeah, Yeah, that's where that
Speaker 1: word comes. He's a post renaissance renaissance man. That's true.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so now we have pressurized diving bells, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and basically it equal to that of the surrounding water.
Speaker 1: So that means you can go deeper, you can stay
Speaker 1: down longer, you can you you run out, Like if
Speaker 1: the water starts to creep up, you just add more
Speaker 1: pressurized air and it pushes the water back down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it keeps the water at baby because it's at
Speaker 1: the same pressure. So to the water, whatever is inside
Speaker 1: the diving bell might as well just be more water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have the crazy urge to fill the diving
Speaker 1: bell up any longer because there's something there just kind
Speaker 1: of goes along. It's happy way to the Mariana Trench.
Speaker 1: That's right. And I bet there was some seventeenth century
Speaker 1: David Blaine that very shortly afterward it was like, I
Speaker 1: can stay down here for two months, and people like
Speaker 1: who cares? Well? The horrible thing was, uh when you
Speaker 1: added pressurized air. Again, you're pressurizing. That's just the diving belt,
Speaker 1: but the people. Yeah, so to become pressurized to go
Speaker 1: down in a diving bell was a pretty horrific thing
Speaker 1: to endure. In and of itself. Yeah, I guess so. Um,
Speaker 1: when they built the Brooklyn Bridge to you know, the
Speaker 1: two towers that that, I guess that. Yeah, those are
Speaker 1: down almost to the bedrock. They were going to go
Speaker 1: down the bedrock, and then they found out like there's
Speaker 1: some pretty stable aggregate thirty ft above bedrocks that they
Speaker 1: just planted them on those. But um, to construct those,
Speaker 1: they had to drop these cassans, which are basically like
Speaker 1: giant structural diving bells, and they pressurized them and it
Speaker 1: kept the water of the river out, so like literally
Speaker 1: the river's just flowing around this stuff. But there's men
Speaker 1: working in these things and they'd have to pressurize before
Speaker 1: going in them, and it was just like this. Their
Speaker 1: ear drums would burst once in a while as they
Speaker 1: were being pressure because it wasn't like gently. It was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess it was better than just walking
Speaker 1: right into the caison, but it was still pretty rough.
Speaker 1: And then they go and work in there for a
Speaker 1: couple of hours and then come out and hopefully not
Speaker 1: get decompression sickness the bends. But actually the project manager,
Speaker 1: the son of the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, Washington
Speaker 1: roebilis the Sun. He suffered a lifelong crippling from decompressing
Speaker 1: sickness after going and inspecting some of the work in
Speaker 1: one of the king Sons and coming out too quickly.
Speaker 1: We know a lot of people died and like, uh,
Speaker 1: I enjoy walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, as many New
Speaker 1: Yorkers do, and you should think about that next time
Speaker 1: you're doing so. Yeah, that like people gave up their
Speaker 1: lives too, so you could like say snarky things and
Speaker 1: Instagram photos of yourself and all the other things that
Speaker 1: you do. Um, there's a really great kim Burns documentary
Speaker 1: on the construction of Brooklyn Bridge. Who I haven't seen
Speaker 1: that one. It's good. It's like a straight up PBS one,
Speaker 1: no frills. Well he's not about frills. He just moves
Speaker 1: pictures like around and yes, hands in and out. This
Speaker 1: may be his least frilly. Okay, yeah, I'm not knocking Kimburns.
Speaker 1: I like a good Kimburn's. Well you'll probably like this
Speaker 1: one then, so uh. A hundred years after being able
Speaker 1: to control the pressure with bellows and that the barrels,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, um and English and other Englishman a scientists
Speaker 1: named John Smeaton invented an actual diving air pump in
Speaker 1: and it was on the surface obviously, and took like
Speaker 1: four guys to operate it. UM and it was basically
Speaker 1: like Dennis Pappine's a ridge anal plan, but it was
Speaker 1: just mechanized. So they were able to build like big
Speaker 1: ones like people. There's many's, like twelve people could go
Speaker 1: down and these things and like have a party if
Speaker 1: they wanted to. They made windows eventually, Yeah, they put
Speaker 1: electricity in them. Yeah, that's a little scary for that
Speaker 1: time period. Oh yeah, wouldn't I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I would have trusted that, Yeah, I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: You know, seventeen or early eight dreds. Yeah, we just
Speaker 1: discovered electricity. Now let's put it in under water. And
Speaker 1: they used them for, like you said, building bridges and
Speaker 1: repairing docks, and early saboteurs would sneak up underwater to
Speaker 1: um cut the anchor lines of enemy ships. Really that's
Speaker 1: a very handy use of So you dug up A
Speaker 1: cool story about UM was that this year he was
Speaker 1: just this May. Yeah, a guy named Harrison o'kenney, at
Speaker 1: twenty nine year old Nigerian boat. Cook was on a tugboat,
Speaker 1: a Chevron tug boat, and in the Atlantic, and it
Speaker 1: sized and he was eventually through all this, you know,
Speaker 1: capsizing and tumbling around and water flowing in and sinking
Speaker 1: a hundred feet yeah, and sinking of course, ended up
Speaker 1: in a bathroom trapped with air. Yeah, sort of like
Speaker 1: the same concept of a diving bell. And people wondered
Speaker 1: he'd survived after sixty hours. That's the sixty hours. But
Speaker 1: physicists were like, well, how did this happen? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have been able to live that long down there, right,
Speaker 1: they were. The press reported that he had something like
Speaker 1: four ft of air something like that, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the chamber that he was in was only about
Speaker 1: four ft high. So sixty hours of air shouldn't have worked.
Speaker 1: It shouldn't have kept him alive. Because about it, like,
Speaker 1: you're breathing, even if it is pressurized air, you're breathing air,
Speaker 1: you're also exhaling carbon dioxide. And when the the ratio
Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide or the percentage of it gets above five,
Speaker 1: things started to go horribly awry and you die shortly
Speaker 1: after that. Yeah, I didn't realize that lack of oxygen
Speaker 1: isn't what kills people. It's too much CEO two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty interesting thing. Yeah, it can happen when you're
Speaker 1: on a ventilator. UM. That's apparently a big risk. When
Speaker 1: you innobate somebody's the ox the CEO to build up,
Speaker 1: you can kill him. So anyway, why didn't this guy die? Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out with pressurized air, especially when it's um
Speaker 1: pressurized against cold water, c O two is readily absorbed
Speaker 1: by that water around it. So when he was exhaling,
Speaker 1: the oxygen was remaining, but the c O two is
Speaker 1: basically being wicked away. And since that c O two
Speaker 1: or the the air bubble that he was in was pressurized,
Speaker 1: he was a hundred feet underwater UM, which actually helped him. Right,
Speaker 1: he had a lot of oxygen. A bunch of oxygen
Speaker 1: was just pushed into this little area. But the CEO
Speaker 1: two is being wicked away, and that's how we managed
Speaker 1: to survive. Yeah. It said for every ten memor you
Speaker 1: descend um one at spheres, pressure of pressure is added
Speaker 1: and it makes it more dense, according to some lawmaker
Speaker 1: named Boil. According to Boyle's law, and so since he
Speaker 1: was thirty meters below it became more dense by times four,
Speaker 1: and so that meant that he didn't need as much
Speaker 1: air as you would think for someone that's under underwater.
Speaker 1: And you know, so how much did he need, like
Speaker 1: you need a day of air? So he only needed
Speaker 1: six cubic meters in the end because of the temperature
Speaker 1: of the water and how deep he was, right, and
Speaker 1: and also I mean, don't remember, that's a lot of
Speaker 1: air compressed into the same amount of area. All those
Speaker 1: molecules are still present, yeah, they're just in a smaller
Speaker 1: amount of area. They also think though that it was
Speaker 1: connected to another air pocket, which probably helped. Even still,
Speaker 1: the guy survived in an impromptu, inadvertent diving bell undred
Speaker 1: feet below the surface for sixty hours, dude in the
Speaker 1: dark under the ocean with his head next to a
Speaker 1: toilet man. And they said that he could hear the
Speaker 1: sea life scavenging on his dead crewmates. That's horrific. That
Speaker 1: happened this May, yeah, not in like eighteen twelve. In May. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there you go. By the way, we'll insert this
Speaker 1: right now because it's a good place for it. You
Speaker 1: were you you were out of town. Did you hear
Speaker 1: about the whole Sharknado thing. Yeah, you predicted Sharknado. I
Speaker 1: invented it. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. For those of you
Speaker 1: don't don't know. Sharknado was a very cheesy movie on
Speaker 1: a network that UM aired a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 1: and blew up. Blew Up didn't get as many viewers
Speaker 1: from the blow up as they would have hoped. But UM,
Speaker 1: I watched it. It was very funny and fun It
Speaker 1: wasn't dumb. Oh yeah, it was terrible, but you know
Speaker 1: in that way. It wasn't one of the guys from
Speaker 1: nine or two I know on it. Yeah, Iron's earring
Speaker 1: was in it. Terror Reid, who oh yeah, she's looking rough.
Speaker 1: You mean I were out of the country and we
Speaker 1: heard about this Sharknado. So thankfully one of our listeners
Speaker 1: UM alerted me to the fact that I invented Sharknado.
Speaker 1: Because in the desert, can it really rain frogs? Episode? UM,
Speaker 1: I say this, Uh no, I mean I think they're light,
Speaker 1: because that's the whole point. Even an updraft from a
Speaker 1: water spelled of two hundred miles an hour isn't going
Speaker 1: to be picking up you know, great white sharks, right,
Speaker 1: that's that's a movie for you, raining sharks. So thanks
Speaker 1: to fan Todd Waters for bringing that to my attention.
Speaker 1: That's impressive. You very clearly. I even said a movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you invented Sharknado. And this thing was released a good
Speaker 1: year ago, right, it was I think May of two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, so that was almost a year before Harrison
Speaker 1: o'keine survives in a diving bell. All sorts of stuff
Speaker 1: coming together, doing the bold ants, feeling the flow. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I can sue anybody, but I'm looking
Speaker 1: into it. Have you. I see you should always ask
Speaker 1: before you sue, like, yeah, sure, so give me some
Speaker 1: give me some cabbage, some bread, little Sharknado cheese. I
Speaker 1: think we should bring back bread for money, okay, bringing
Speaker 1: a little bread? Yeah, all right, so they sent me
Speaker 1: bread though that would suck with like a note that decision.
Speaker 1: Want want shape like a shark. Yeah, maybe we should
Speaker 1: bring back bread into the regular vernacular and then you
Speaker 1: ask them. Okay, okay, that's our plan, all right, So
Speaker 1: sorry about that sidebar. I just want to give myself
Speaker 1: credit words. You should be very proud of that. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Um Hey, I know I when a good movie idea
Speaker 1: comes along, I'm all over it. You and Iron's earing. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about diving bells, you
Speaker 1: should type those two words into the search bar at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and it will bring up
Speaker 1: this delightful little article written by a young exuberant Chuck Bryant.
Speaker 1: And since I said exuberant, it's time for a message break.
Speaker 1: And now it's time for a listener mail Chuck, whether
Speaker 1: you like it or not, I hope you're ready. We
Speaker 1: heard from another teacher. We'd like to read these. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: the reason I'm writing it is to tell you how
Speaker 1: much stuff you should know has helped me during my
Speaker 1: first year of teaching. I am twenty four. Just finished
Speaker 1: my first year as a high school social studies teacher. Alright.
Speaker 1: This year I taught law and justice and AP psychology.
Speaker 1: Law and justice, that's awesome, and AP psychology Yeah, well rounded.
Speaker 1: Since I listened to a huge bulk of your shows
Speaker 1: when I was preparing various lessons, I use the information
Speaker 1: that I had on different podcast I've heard on different podcasts.
Speaker 1: Then I thought, you know what, I should just play it.
Speaker 1: I'll get even lazier and just play the show. UM.
Speaker 1: The podcasts were a big hit with the kids. They
Speaker 1: got a break from hearing my voice and I got
Speaker 1: a break from talking stuff you should know. Is also
Speaker 1: great UH for teachers because the articles you guys use
Speaker 1: for the podcast are well researched and written. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. I don't have to worry that you guys
Speaker 1: are just making up information, and if you are, don't
Speaker 1: tell me. UM. Students said the winner of their all
Speaker 1: time favorite UH in class was how Barbie works That
Speaker 1: that's probably my favorite too. It's a good one, Betton Disco.
Speaker 1: I created a pretty awesome power point to accompany it,
Speaker 1: and I attached it and I looked at It's a
Speaker 1: really neat actually. UM. We discussed how Barbie and other
Speaker 1: toys can influence gender identity and body image and developing children. UM.
Speaker 1: Overall some of the podcasts of streamed UM, Japanese and
Speaker 1: tournament camps, and dueling Right to Privacy When You Die UM.
Speaker 1: In psychology, I hit on concussions, yeah, uh, Monkalsen syndrome,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, hypnosis, lobotomys and PTSD. Remember lobotomy. That was
Speaker 1: one of the alf invest We should have called it
Speaker 1: Lobotomy's heart. We love my lobotomy on MPR. Do you remember,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that dude, Yeah, that guy here's our hero.
Speaker 1: How what's his name? Howard something? Yeah, Howard. Just to
Speaker 1: tell you guys again, thanks a lot for making my
Speaker 1: job easier because you use classroom appropriate language and report
Speaker 1: factual research based on evidence and information. You're an amazing
Speaker 1: classroom resoorts resorts. Did you say there? Did you miss
Speaker 1: spell it? I did? Okay, keep them coming, Carly Brown, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Carly Brown. We appreciate that, Miss Brown,
Speaker 1: as your students probably call you. That's right, Thank you,
Speaker 1: miss Brown for letting us know that. We like to
Speaker 1: know that we're helping shape young minds for the better.
Speaker 1: That's right. Um, And we do use classroom appropriate language,
Speaker 1: don't we. I never termed it that? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: uh let's see, chuckers. Um, what should we say anything
Speaker 1: you want to hear about? Uh? If you have invented something,
Speaker 1: because I've invented the snowboard too. Remember no, I don't
Speaker 1: remember that. I have a crayon drawing from when I
Speaker 1: was six of of the skiboard. Oh yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: guy going down a ski slope on a little skateboard.
Speaker 1: Of skis on Wow. So I've invented two things, the
Speaker 1: sharknado huh and the snowboard. So if you haven't inadvertently
Speaker 1: invented something that's a great one man, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear about it. Yeah. Um, you can tweet that to
Speaker 1: us at s Y s K podcast. You can post
Speaker 1: it on our Facebook page at Facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email
Speaker 1: at Chuck and I will both get to stuff podcasts
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com, and you can check
Speaker 1: out our home on the web. It's a little website
Speaker 1: known as Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of I Heart Radios. How
Speaker 1: stuff Works for more podcasts for my heart Radio because
Speaker 1: at the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts are wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H