Not The Onion

12111 readers

1805 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

Links to news stories from...
...credible sources, with...
...their original headlines, that...
...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

219

Trump Finally Weighs in on Controversial Shark vs. Electrocution Debate (whowhatwhy.org)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

46 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In a soliloquy on batteries for electric vehicles, including ships, he pondered what would happen if such a boat were to sink and the battery would submerge.

...

“It must be because of MIT, my relationship with MIT, very smart, I say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there,” he said as MAGA supporters listened intently. “By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Did you notice this? A lot of sha…”

...

“So there is a shark 10 yards from the boat, ten yards… or here,” he said. “Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?”

...

“He didn’t know. He said: ‘Nobody has ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it’s a good question. I think there is a lot of electric current coming through that water,’” Trump said. “But you know what I would do if there is a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time.* I’m not getting near the shark.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Is lithium+water similarly explosive as sodium+water?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Yes but no. Chemically pure lithium reacts vere energetically with water. The stuff in batteries reacts too, but it's more like an unextinguishable toxic hellflare than an explosion. Pretty sure the batteries just keep burning under the water until the lithium is all gone.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Thanks for the explanation

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I don't think they'll burn under water. The main reason battery fires are hard to extinguish is because at high temperatures, metal oxides in them decompose and release oxygen gas. So you can't extinguish the fire, but you can try to cool it down.

This deck on the NASA website illustrates that very little oxygen is released from a single cell

Per this video:

So, as long as the temperature is hot enough, the batteries can just keep reigniting unless you use thousands of gallons of water to bring the temperature down to the point where that can’t happen.

Submersing it in the ocean would probably cool it very quickly and put it out.