Happy to be Here and Oil on the bottom

I'm so happy at the moment to be here. I have a lot of volunteer stuff to do this morning, so I'm hoping that looming work forces me to keep this brief. I have a lot on my mind.

I've been reading emails about break-ins and muggings back in my old neighborhood. Either crime really is getting worse or people are just talking about it more. Reading a story about a woman having her purse taken from her while she's in the same parking lot I've frequented more times than I can count is a bit surreal. I currently live in a place where I purposefully carry a very expensive lavish looking hand bag so I blend in better. Here, I carry a very fancy bag so that folks know I LIVE here and am not a tourist. The 'middle east' has a bad rap in the west for being a horrid place. But, you know what folks? My fancy hand bags and I are pretty happy, most of the time.

Now, turning to the oil industry. I've been reading about the spill going on currently in the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, I hope they can plug it/cap it/whatever to stop the spill quickly. What most people may not realize is that it is physically/technically more difficult to go to the bottom of the ocean than it is to go to the moon. The leak in the Gulf of Mexico is about 5,000 feet down.

Now, quoting from http://www.challengers101.com/Pressure.html (My thanks for this article!)
"Scuba divers know that as you go down to greater depths, the water pressure increases. In fact, the increase in pressure is 14.7 psi for every 34 feet of additional depth. A diver that descends to a depth of 100 feet must withstand a pressure of ...
( 100 ft / 34 ) x 14.7 = 43.24 psi
This pressure is in addition to the normal atmospheric pressure at the surface. The pressure limits the depth to which unprotected divers can go, and the pressure causes lots of problems.
The point is that as you descend deeper into a fluid, whether it be water or air or whatever, the pressure increases. And if you go upward toward the surface, the pressure becomes less.
Here is another view of the pressure at the bottom of a tank of water. Suppose the tank is rather tall so that the depth of water in the tank is 10 feet. What will be the pressure at the bottom of the tank?
We can use the relationship above to find the answer:
( 10 ft / 34 ) x 14.7 = 4.32 psi
This means that each square inch of surface area on the bottom of the tank is being pushed downward with a force of 4.32 pounds.
Now consider this: suppose we have a tall, skinny column of water 10 feet tall, with the column being one inch on each side. That is, its bottom surface area is 1 square inch. How much would the column of water weight?
Sparing you the details of the math, the weight of the column of water would be 4.32 pounds.
Here's the point: the pressure at the bottom of the tank in psi is the same as the weight of the water supported by each square inch of the bottom surface of the tank." At 5000 feet or about 1500m that's a lot of pressure. If I did my math correctly, that's almost 2,200 psi. Ouch. (Please email if I've messed up on my math.)

Maybe the world needs to work very hard on educating children to become better engineers. Maybe we need to inspire children more. Whomever is working on that oil leak, is literally and figuratively, working under a lot of pressure.

Peace.