Indeed, if you reversed the situation so that the tank contained 1 atm of pressure, and the outside was instead the vacuum, then it would not explode.įirst of all, as mentioned, atmospheric pressure can exert very high loads when integrated over significant areas. But do you think you could tear a hole in the can? To illustrate this point, it's easy to compress an empty can of coke. This is because the former case involves simply relocating atomic-scale dislocations while the latter involves breaking atomic bonds. Whereas the energy required to rip it (or your bike tyres) apart requires significantly more energy. The energy required to bend metal (which, by the way, is naturally pretty soft) is not that great. The crumpling of that tank involves the metal undergoing some fairly insignificant bending. I think this gets to the crux of your confusion. However, in the comments you raise the point that you pump your bike tyres to 40 psi (about 3 atm) and yet they don't explode. Put like that, it's not surprising that those metal tanks crumple. Atmospheric pressure is equivalent to supporting a weight of 10 tonnes (about 10 average cars) per metre squared.
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