15-August-2005, 05:33 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: The beautiful north coast (Ohio)
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by weatherc
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Moose
Correct me if I'm wrong, though, wouldn't a bullet-sized hole with comfortable air pressure on one side and hard vaccuum on the other simply make a lot of noise and empty the room of air over a few minutes or so? Maybe cause a detectable breeze if you're close enough to it? I mean, you can only get so much air through that tiny little hole, right?
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You are absolutely correct. They did this on Mythbusters, though not in a hard vacuum. They shot a bullet through the side of the plane while it was pressurized (so that the pressure difference between the inside of the plane and outside were the same as if it were at 30,000 feet), and the results were pretty much what you described. When they shot a hole through the cabin or the window, nothing moved, not even stuff right near the hole. This result was disappointing to the Mythbusters team, so of course they had to see what would happen when high explosives were used instead. Those results were pretty much what you would expect.  |
I don't think the difference between "hard vacuum" (in quotes because I don't know of a definition of hard vacuum) and 30,000 feet vacuum would be significant for this effect.
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