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> Within that radius, the injuries from such a massive blast in a downtown location can be as varied as the victims who experience them, but a number of them ar
by est31 6y ago
> Within that radius, the injuries from such a massive blast in a downtown location can be as varied as the victims who experience them, but a number of them are likely from glass and other flying projectiles. Flat, delicate, frangible, and installed in large sheets, glass is the perfect target for a blast wave of even minuscule magnitude; it shatters and flies easier than any other substance.
The glass damage must be horrible. Your entire home covered in tiny pieces of glass.
I hate when glass breaks at home because no matter how much you clean, it gets everywhere and months later you discover small shards in some distant place.
Once I tripped on my way home after grocery shopping, almost at the destination. It wasn't even a big fall, but some glass bottles broke. They were next to plastic bags filled with oats. In the "recovery operations" I conducted afterwards, I threw away the remainders of the bottles and cleaned the oats bags under flowing water, to get rid of the glass bottle's contains on the bags. As I did this, I noticed the oats themselves getting wet, below the transparent plastic. I wondered, how can this happen, it's supposed to be water-proof. Then I found a tiny, almost invisible cut where a glass shard has entered the plastic bag. It was a big shard and I don't know what had happened had someone not noticed it and ate it.
Horrified, I threw away the entire bag of oats, the risk of more, possibly smaller shards remaining was too big. Other bags which passed the "water test" I kept and I ended up eating their contents.
I hope the people of Beirut are doing similar checks for their stored food, for their own safety. I read that many folks already have glass shards in their bodies due to the explosion but that's past damage that can only be managed. The future damage is preventable.
- interestica 6y ago> The glass damage must be horrible. Your entire home covered in tiny pieces of glass. Watch this video at .25x to really see how glass reacts in the pressure wave. You can see the look on the bride's face as the initial vibrations/sound reaches her. Then, you can actually see the window pane bow like a wind sail. https://youtu.be/PUQ-QvCqDjA https://youtu.be/PUQ-QvCqDjA
- odysseus 6y agoOh no. I really hope the bride and groom are OK!
- stan_rogers 6y agoThey're fine. And she's an MD who spent the better part of the rest of that day doing what she could for the people around her. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.5678021/beirut-bride-seen-in-viral-video-says-she-thought-she-was-about-to-die-1.5678023 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-ed...
- tamersalama 6y agoA different couple
- orblivion 6y agoThat's actually a _different_ wedding photo, happening at exactly the same time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQssU3dTKUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQssU3dTKUs
- supernova87a 6y agoWow, you can really see in the glass reflections, the arrival of the ground compression (?) waves fractions of a second before the air pressure wave hits. And the wife notices it before the husband does.
- miketery 6y agoIs the sound faster than the shockwave or same speed? I think same speed. Might have been a previous explosion that triggered the look before the main one.
- gpm 6y agoI think you're hearing/seeing the difference between the speed of sound through the ground, and through the air.
- jhrmnn 6y agoSound moves 4-times faster in water than in air, I assume even faster in ground surface, so let’s just assume it arrives instantly via ground. This would mean a delay like in lightning/thunder, which is what one can see in the video (2–3 seconds ~ 0.5–1 km). (This is the restaurant https://goo.gl/maps/td5K1vxUDBN4i1CA8 https://goo.gl/maps/td5K1vxUDBN4i1CA8) But I could equally imagine it’s some lesser explosion before the main blast.
- numpad0 6y agoObject moves -> air goes back and forth -> your eardrum moves -> pressure pattern over time registers as sound as a 20-20kHz ish spectrum captured at 0.1s ish timesteps Supersonic airplanes move past the speed of sound(280-340m/s in air) and generate wavefront at its interfaces with air but the resulting disjoint tsunami wave expands at the speed of sound and heard as single ‘bang’ when it reaches ears or microphones So there’s no way one could hear the bang through air before visual bang hits However the speed of sound is about 10x faster on solid mediums such as ground or seawater so could be those
- m0zg 6y agoIt's actually two "bangs" for a plane. Tum-dum. Source: grew up about 100km away from a military air base in Russia at which at least a couple planes went supersonic almost every day for years. You can hear several sonic booms in this video, although they're from low-flying planes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmhU7SEo4gg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmhU7SEo4gg. The higher the plane, the more distinct and "bassy" the "booms". Here's another example, a bit higher, a bit more distinct: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_KbZON5sW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_KbZON5sW0
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- booleandilemma 6y agoWhy does the camera lens not shatter in this case? And in the same vein, what happens to peoples’ eyeglasses? Does anyone know?
- crooked-v 6y agoEyeglass lenses are usually made from plastic or polyurethane variants these days, as they can be much lighter, thinner, and tougher than glass with similar-enough optical properties to cover the needs of most eye conditions.
- mnl 6y agoI consider PC a wonder material yet I went back to 1.7 AR coated glass (higher than that it's a bit overkill unless you really need it IMO). It's crisper, actually cheaper, heat resistant and virtually scratch proof if you clean it properly. It's heavier but I'm not going back to finding pinpricks after bouts of wind and all the extra care. The thing about glass is that it can shatter upon impact, plastic lenses won't but basically get ruined all the same in my experience.
- pletnes 6y agoI’ve not seem glass as an option recently. I miss having glass glasses for the exact reasons you describe. Worn plastic is scratched and give nasty artifacts.
- DanTheManPR 6y agoThe ratio of the thickness of the glass compared to the unsupported span of material makes them relatively much more rigid than a big, floppy pane of glass. A glass window is not only much less rigid, but also maximizes the surface area that pressure from the blast wave can push against.
- pauljurczak 6y agoThis and the fact that eyeglasses are usually not firmly attached to a huge chunk of reinforced concrete.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- walrus01 6y agoRT/RUPTLY is well known for stealing other peoples' video and putting their huge gaudy watermark on it. Here is the same video where at least the media logo is on the bottom right corner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBV8nnp98vc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBV8nnp98vc
- rapnie 6y agoI was around during the Enschede, Netherlands fireworks factory explosion [0], just outside the radius where all glass shattered. Saw the glass ripple effect along a line of appartment buildings with full-height windows. A really astounding sight I'll never forget. With the amount of curvature caused by the shockwave it seemed these windows must surely break. But they did not. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster
- Waterluvian 6y agoSo why don’t we laminate or whatever our glass so it does what car glass does? Saving money?
- crististm 6y agoYes. The reason is we don't expect to have as many similar explosions that would make laminating glass necessary everywhere. If we'd expect that, then we'd have bigger problems in the first place.
- redis_mlc 6y agoBeirut has been at war for decades, so it's one city where residential and commercial laminated glass would have made sense.
- avh02 6y agoAs a Lebanese who lived in Lebanon for 5 years (far away now, happily) - I always found it amazing that glass facades were being built on the newer buildings. For a country/city that's known for the occasional explosion it definitely doesn't seem like a good idea (as this event has shown). That said, even regular windows were launched into people's houses (along with their frames) so I guess it wouldn't necessarily help here. Laminating the glass would probably help for your regular/occasional explosion, but not for this, as you'd just have a giant pane smack you hard i guess.
- sukilot 6y agoCar glass is pebbled so it crumbles on impact to minimize damage.
- chii 6y agoit would be (very) expensive to make laminate glass bottles.
- pjc50 6y agoQuite hard to laminate a surface that isn't flat-ish. Bottles etc are just blown. And they're disposable anyway, no point in making them several times more expensive for a rare situation.