Okay, so I'm watching Jaws on TNT this morning...

[Daylonious]

..and had a question for the group. I'm just at the part in the movie where Quint goes 'he'll not go down, not with 3 barrels he won't..."

And promptly our buddy, Mr. Shark aka The Landlord goes down with three barrels of course.

So out of curiousity, just how much lift is in three plastic barrels?

They look like yellow, plastic, 55 gallon barrels to me.

I'm thinking what? 300# of lift per barrel? More?

I know it's a movie, just wondered how powerful a swimmer you'd have to be to descend with three barrels attached to ya...

D.

 

[drbill]

Not a clue here. I watched Jaws in the theater when it first came out (1975?). I stopped diving for several years. Didn't go back in until I saw Jaws II.

 

[scubatoys]

Ok... Lets assume that the barrels are rigid and will not compress, otherwise, our lift will diminish with depth. It takes approx 8 gallons to make a cubic foot, so we got 64 lbs per cubic foot of lift, 55/8 gives us about 6.9 cubic feet in each barrel, so you're getting about 440 lbs of lift per barrel....

I think we're going to need a bigger boat...

 

[mjh]

"Myth Busters" dealt with this on their show. If I recall they found out no way the shark "Bruce", could have even pulled down one barrel.

 

[dherbman]

8.64 lb/gal=475lbs per barrel. Barrel weight is probably close to 32 lbs, so close to 443 lbs of buoancy per barrel. 1330 for 3.

 

[cnctina]

Mythbusters did a show on "jaws" and did the calculations but dont recall what the figure is.. They draged the boat backwards and blew up a dive cylinder, It was cool.

 

[XJae]

Not a clue here. I watched Jaws in the theater when it first came out (1975?). I stopped diving for several years. Didn't go back in until I saw Jaws II.

I saw that in the Jerry Lewis Theatre, it was on Amity Lane.
Even lamer than II was Jaws III in 3D, what a laugh.

 

[Daylonious]

Love this board!

1300 pounds of lift.. that should pretty much keep anything on the surface short of a nuclear sub...

D.

 

[Vtdiver2]

"Myth Busters" dealt with this on their show. If I recall they found out no way the shark "Bruce", could have even pulled down one barrel.

They did do a piece on this, but found the shark could pull down 3 barrels, but wouldn't have been able to keep them down. Adam was even able to get one of the barrels used in the original movie, a prop he got from a buddy. Here's something I found on the MYTHBUSTER's website. A couple of people were discussing the episode....

Yes, they did use a 3000 pound shark. But the shark in Jaws (that had no name. The shark in Jaws was not named Bruce any more than Brody was named Roy, or Hooper was named Richard.) weighed 6000 pounds as estimated by Quint. It was clearly supposed to be an extraordinary shark. So scaling up a reef shark to a 3000 pound Great White was not really correct. Also, they tested one shark for its strength to come up with the determination that a shark can pull its own weight, etc. Just like humans, athere are strong sharks, and there are weak sharks. Maybe they got a weak one. And maybe the shark in Jaws was supposed to be an extraordinarily strong shark.

For example, maybe an AVERAGE shark can pull 1.1 tmes its own weight and they just got a particualrly weak one. Now it is possible that the shark in Jaws was so much srtonger than average that it could pull 1.25 times its own weight. Finally, maybe Quint was off a little bit. Maybe instead of a 25 footer weighing three tons, it was a 28 footer weighing 6500 pounds. So, then, the shark in Jaws could possibly pull 8125 pounds.

What I am most disappointed in is that when they were pulling the boat, why didn't they do their usually MO and, after supposedly busting the myth, then DUPLICATE the myth. In other words, why didn't they increase the force on the boat until it DID do what the movie showed. Then we could have known how big and powerful a fictional shark would have to be to pull the boat backwards or pull the barrels underwater

.

C-Dawg

 

[Manta Aria]

25'-28' 6000 #? We're not talking Great White ( Carcharodon Carcharias) anymore kids, we're talking Megalodon ( Carcharodon Megalodon) up to 45'. Heaven only knows what those creatures were capable of. Imagine a Great Big ( bigger than a Whale Shark) Great White.