Andersonh1
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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-explosive-theory-what-doomed-crew-hunley-180974159/
If a shock wave traveling through the watery tissue of the chest wall is like an out-of-control semi-truck speeding down a mountain highway, then lung tissue is the gravel pit of a runaway truck ramp. The truck itself suddenly slows to less than 2 percent of its prior speed—but its great kinetic energy must still go somewhere. Cargo goes flying, gravel flies everywhere. Likewise, the delicate tissues that form the walls of the lungs rupture and shred, and blood sprays into the alveoli, the gas pockets needed for breathing. This breakdown is called spalling.
Brain tissue can also be affected by a shock wave, which can cause traumatic injury without ever damaging the skull. Critically, the brain remains intact after a primary blast injury, and the only potential sign of trauma is a faint inkblot of blood that may be spread across its surface.
Fatalities from a primary blast occur at lower pressures than the pressure levels required to translate a human body. To rephrase that in plain English: A person will die, choked with blood, from a shock wave that was far too weak to move him.
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We set off as many charges as we could before the sun began to set on the pond. Blast after blast, we captured and saved the waveforms. I was thrilled to see that the readings looked consistent. And like the actual Hunley, the scale-model Tiny refused to show any damage itself, even after repeated blasts, even as it transmitted the pressures inside.
By the end of the day, the data saved on the laptop was worth more to me than anything I owned. I immediately backed it up in triplicate.
The next step was to translate all the squiggly pressure traces into a meaningful description of what happened on that cold night in February 1864. My end goal was not simply to sit in a series of muddy ponds and set off charges. It was to determine whether the crew had been killed by their own bomb while cocooned inside the steel walls of their vessel.
Brain tissue can also be affected by a shock wave, which can cause traumatic injury without ever damaging the skull. Critically, the brain remains intact after a primary blast injury, and the only potential sign of trauma is a faint inkblot of blood that may be spread across its surface.
Fatalities from a primary blast occur at lower pressures than the pressure levels required to translate a human body. To rephrase that in plain English: A person will die, choked with blood, from a shock wave that was far too weak to move him.
----------------------
We set off as many charges as we could before the sun began to set on the pond. Blast after blast, we captured and saved the waveforms. I was thrilled to see that the readings looked consistent. And like the actual Hunley, the scale-model Tiny refused to show any damage itself, even after repeated blasts, even as it transmitted the pressures inside.
By the end of the day, the data saved on the laptop was worth more to me than anything I owned. I immediately backed it up in triplicate.
The next step was to translate all the squiggly pressure traces into a meaningful description of what happened on that cold night in February 1864. My end goal was not simply to sit in a series of muddy ponds and set off charges. It was to determine whether the crew had been killed by their own bomb while cocooned inside the steel walls of their vessel.