On Life, the Universe and Motorcars

Just seen it. Its kinda long. Here's the quickie if you can't be bothered yourself:

Troy-prince: Wow Helen, you're proper hot
Helen: You're way poncier than hubby. Lets go to Troy.
Greek hubby: Where's wifey got to now? Oh. Off to war we go then.

*short boat ride later*

Achilles: Warrrrgh!
20,000 Troy soldiers: Ow. Dead.

Achilles: Bored now. Keep going without me chaps.
Greeks: Ow, now we're getting our asses kicked.

Achilles: You killed my generic relative! I kill your princey brother.
Princy brother: Fighty fighty. Ow. Dead.
King: Um, bugger. Temporary truce while I mourn?

*days pass*

King: lol, they've all buggered off now.
King: Oooh look, a sod off huge wooden horse. I'm having that.

Achilles: A murderin' we shall go in Troy...
Troy citizens: OW OW OW. Dead.
Troy-prince: Take this!
Achilles: In the heel? You git! Dead.

In a recent article I voiced my opinion that Charlie really didn't have to die in Lost. If you're too lazy to read that article, he basically got trapped in a submerged watertight room. The glass porthole of the room was blown out by a suicidal grenade-wielding Russian and the water rushed in. The room filled up rapidly and poor Charlie drowned.



I suggested that there was rather a lot of TV physics going on to artificially drown Charlie in a situation that shouldn't have been immediately fatal to him.

The scientific method can help us out here. Lets do science!

Observe
In the image the room is flooded to the roof with water. In other films I've seen characters survive in air pockets in capsized ships and so on.

Hypothesise
I hypothesise that where you have a mix of air and water in a sealed space, the air makes its way to the highest point. I also hypothesise that water and air cannot occupy the same space.

Predict
In a sealed vessel such as the one Charlie was trapped in, an air pocket would form once the water level inside the room was higher than the porthole. This should work for vessels of any size, with portholes in any position.

Experiment
Here's where it gets interesting (I know, finally). My experimental plan is to submerge an airtight vessel then remove the cap making a large porthole, just like Charlie's watery prison. Then when the water has stopped rushing about I'll re-cap the vessel and remove it from the water to see if there is any air trapped inside.



If my hypothesis is right I should see a fair amount of space within the vessel that is not filled with water. If it comes out full of water, the hypothesis is falsified and Charlie should have drowned after all.

Now, I don't have a life-sized vessel and a conveniently deep pool of water for this. I'm going to use an empty plastic drink bottle and a sink full of water.

Results

Apparatus: Bottle, sink, water.


Vessel fully submerged, with cap in place. The bottle is airtight at this point and is completely full of air.


Cap has been removed and water is flooding in. Note the air bubbles rising from the opening showing escaping air as the water enters. Yes, I do know my drain plug is going rusty.


Everything has settled now. No more water is entering and no more bubbles of air are escaping. The water line around my hand shows that the bottle is still fully submerged. Note the waterline appears to be around the middle of the bottle. Ie, the vessel is only half full, even with no cap on.


The cap is now replaced with the bottle still underwater to lock the amount of water/air in the bottle. Upon removal, it is clear that there is not only an air pocket in the bottle, but that it is about 40% of the volume of the vessel. The water has entered until the porthole was fully covered. At this point no more air can escape and therefore no more water can get in.


So Charlie could have survived. In fact, he could have survived easily, even if he couldn't swim. He could have stood with his feet on the floor and still had his head above water. Could this be an example of when TV physics goes bad?

Thought exercise: Under what conditions might the room have flooded completely?

(warning: contains Lost season 3 spoilers)

What's the worst thing you can see out of the porthole of your vulnerable underwater station? That's right, a crazed Russian with a primed hand grenade and a mischievous grin. Especially if your mate shot him earlier with a harpoon and he's now kinda annoyed.



Uh oh. Better get out of there. Or if you're Charlie, seal yourself into the small room with the porthole. Not that sensible given that he had time to get out and shut the door as well, but he's clearly not very bright.



The grenade goes off outside with Charlie on the opposite side of the room. The water acts as a powerful transmission medium for the shockwave and the window is blown out. Somehow Charlie isn't killed by bits of flying toughened glass that are shot into the room, or by the compression wave from the grenade itself.



Lucky Charlie! You should be dead by now, rather than just a little damp around the ankles. Still, you're not, so lets look for another way out. There are a few options:

Charlie could grab one of the air tanks off the wall. Luckily there was a continuity error in his favour and the computer on the left of the room has turned into a couple of SCUBA tanks. Handy, but Charlie clearly isn't that observant and hasn't noticed them.



Maybe they're not air tanks, but deadly gas canisters or something. You never quite know on Lost's island. Thankfully Charlie is in a sealed watertight room (since his friend Desmond deeper inside the station isn't getting wet). This is good news! The water will only flood in until it has covered the porthole and no more air can escape. That should leave a pretty large air pocket at the top of the room that he can survive in for a while. Easily long enough for Desmond to get some of the SCUBA gear he found in the moonpool room and rescue him.

Unluckily either physics doesn't apply to Charlie's room, or he fails to notice the large air gap at the top. He's got important stuff on his mind like giving Desmond a message. He can be forgiven for pushing breathing down the priorities list.



Thankfully we know Charlie is a strong swimmer. He swam down into this station without any breathing apparatus, so presumably could swim back up easily enough. If only there were some kind of convenient man-sized hole to the outside he could squeeze through...



Too late, drowned. What a complete Charlie!


Tangent: Now we know there's a boat sat offshore and that it probably isn't to do with either Penny or the Others, could they be the ones who did the supplies drop in the Lockdown episode?

(warning: contains Lost season 3 spoilers)

Advice for attractive young women: Don't join the cast of Lost. Your odds of survival aren't good. Even if you do survive, you won't get an easy life. Lets have a quick role-call, and this is by no means a complete list:


Shannon: Dead
Murdered by gunshot.


Cindy: Missing
Abducted, fate unknown


Susan: Dead
Died from a natural blood disorder


Libby: Dead
Murdered by gunshot in the hatch


Ana-Lucia: Dead
Murdered by gunshot to the stomach by Michael


Colleen: Dead
Murdered by gunshot on the sub, died in surgery


Nikki: Dead
Mistakenly buried alive whilst paralysed


Bea: Dead
Murdered by gunshot to the chest by Mikhail


Greta: Dead
Murdered by gunshot by the underwater moon-pool


Bonnie: Dead
Murdered by gunshot to the back


Naomi: Dead
Murdered by throwing knife in the back


Unnamed Other: Dead
Murdered by explosion whilst raiding the camp


Alex: Alive
Parted from her mother for most of her life


Sarah: Alive
Had major spinal surgery after a car crash


Nadia: Alive
Tortured by the Iraqi Republican Guard


Juliette: Alive
Trapped on the island and manipulated into murder


Kate: Alive
Seen in a future flashback, survives and escapes


Sun: Alive
Seen in a future flashback. Abducted on the island


Penny: Alive
Separated from her love presumably by her father


Claire: Alive
Abducted and held drugged whilst pregnant

I make that 11 dead, 8 alive and 1 missing. Not good odds!

Hooray! After almost two months of silence from our American chums, my RSS reader burst into life with new episodes of Prison Break, Heroes and Studio 60. Just Lost missing from the mix, and that's comming soon I understand.

What do Americans do with themselves over Christmas?