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To: TalonDJ; bill1952
Ever try to pull a rock out of mud? you get a little resistance. That is what bill1952 was talking about.

That's not what bill1952 was talking about. His original quote was: "Not to mention that sub is not just "sitting" on the bottom. It is being pressed down into it by untold pressure."

He's confusing pressure with weight. The pressure on the sub is equal all the way around, regardless of whether it's surrounded by water, on a rocky bottom, or stuck in the mud.

It works just like a suction cup on the wall. It stays there because of air pressure on the outside. To you move it you have to equalize that pressure by getting air under it.

This is an entirely different thing, and is more akin to the pressure differences between that inside the sub and outside. In your cup on the wall, you've sucked the air out creating a (partial) vacuum. That force pulls the cup into the wall, but the wall pushes back with equal force. The friction between the cup and wall (created by the vacuum) are what hold the cup in place. You could then cut the wall out around the suction cup and create a little "atmospheric submarine." Set it on the floor and pick it up. It won't be any harder at sea level than it would be in Denver, even though it would be missing a full mile of the thickest atmosphere above it in Denver.

84 posted on 08/05/2005 8:22:43 AM PDT by green iguana
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To: green iguana
It is only no hard because there is air under it. Set it in a very thin layer of water and try that again. Hard. Now try it in a large tub of water. Easy again. He is not confusing the two. The difference is that solids and near solids don't transmit pressure the way true fluids do. Setting something on the floor does not relate since there is not viscus boundary to crate a suction when you pull it up. What do you think the force of a suction is except the pressure of standard atmosphere pressing down. A suction cup (or section of wall sitting in a thin puddle of water) could be pulled up with less force if it was at high altitude. It is the pressure difference between the out side and the inside. Any time you create a viscus boundary around the base of an object sitting in a flat solid you create a suction situation where the ambient pressure can't equalize between the object and the surface and that pressure will reside .separating the two (with the help of a tiny viscus force)
111 posted on 08/08/2005 6:07:38 AM PDT by TalonDJ
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