How Did Molasses Move So Fast?

In 1919, a steel tank in Boston split open and released 2.3 million gallons of molasses. The wave killed 21 people. The tank had been leaking for years, and the company painted it brown to hide it. This video explains the physics behind the Great Molasses Flood: how a liquid pushes harder the deeper it goes, why a tank wall is pulled tight like the hoop of a barrel, why the tank's steel was too thin and too brittle, and why molasses, cooling in the winter streets, became a trap. 0:00 A wave of molasses 0:46 A tank built in a hurry 1:39 How a liquid pushes on a tank 2:56 Too thin, too brittle 3:49 The warning signs 4:32 The last days 5:15 The collapse 5:47 Why it was so deadly 6:49 The court case 7:49 Today Sources Stephen Puleo, Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 (2003) Ronald Mayville, structural analysis of the molasses tank (2014) Nicole Sharp, Jordan Kennedy, Shmuel Rubinstein, fluid dynamics study of the Boston Molasses Flood, APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (2016) New England Historical Society, "The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919" Images Photographs of the tank and the disaster, 1919: public domain in the United States All diagrams and animations: The Drawing Board Films Music "Lightless Dawn" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... In memory of the twenty-one people who died on January 15, 1919. #History #Engineering #Boston