r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Epelep • 1d ago
Video Filling a frozen lake with air
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u/ellisellisrocks 1d ago
This feels like a terrible idea but I don't have the information to understand why.
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u/thisimpetus 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm pretty sure (but open to being corrected) that the low compressibility of water helps distribute downward pressure from supported mass and makes ice more load-bearing. My intuition is just screaming that this is a great way to make the ice you're standing on less able take your weight.
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u/IUpvoteGME 1d ago
The low compressibility of water only protects the volume, not the shape. The ice can and does still flex. It flexes more when air is pumped under there. This flexing is the root cause of un-safety.
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u/thisimpetus 23h ago
(This is curiosity not rebuttal) but this doesn't contradict my reasoning, if I understand you—stress is still better distributed, which in turn lessens deformation? Is that right? Or are you saying they're not strictly related? If so can you explain?
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u/IUpvoteGME 19h ago
Your reasoning holds. My point is more, if the ice was going to break because of the air, it would have broken without the air and a single firm step.
It's the same way that a plate of jello becomes a less secure platform to stand on if bubbles are injected into it. It's technically true, but it misses the fragility (or integrity) of the medium.
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u/F_Beast 17h ago
Here’s my take. Air is a compressible fluid that behaves differently under pressure than water, a non-compressible fluid. In this case, it leads to lower structural integrity as areas of high pressure exerted on the ice can give way by compressing the air directly below it. Here, the ice will crack easier due to the moment exerted on it. However, water will resist compression as a non-compressible fluid but also as denser fluid which will cause buoyant forces to come into play. Buoyancy forces push up on the ice helping it to deform less but as the pressure increases so do the buoyant forces. Due to the way the ice deforms the buoyant forces will be evenly distributed on but also around the area of the pressure source. Cracks will occur when the pressure at the source overcomes the yield strength of the ice after subtracting the pressure from the reaction buoyant forces applied on just the area of the pressure source.
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u/m135in55boost Interested 1d ago
Exactly that, it's no longer resting on anything
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u/oldsystem 1d ago
Air is something.
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u/FilthyPrawnz 1d ago
But not the right something.
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u/negativeHumanExp 1d ago
Every car on the road is full of air lots of things use air for heavy ass weight.
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u/iamjakeparty 22h ago
And if the tires were made of ice instead of rubber it wouldn't matter much how air was inside, they'd shatter.
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u/Oh_yes_I_did 19h ago
Hypothetically if her were to plug the hole with a cartoon cork so that the air is trapped would it still have a strong support since the air is stuck between the water and ice would it provide some sort of support since air also has compression resistance (not as much as water of course)
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u/RockApeGear 18h ago
It's not just resting on air. It's sitting on a pocket of PRESSURIZED air. I imagine that makes all the difference.
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u/_and_I_ 23h ago
I wanted to write the exact same thing, but seeing you did before me provoked me to try and argue against you. I believe, the overpressure necessary to displace the water must be higher than the default pressure of the water, resulting in a higher upwards force than in equilibrium. This should be independent of the density of the medium. Hence, the air is actual supporting the ice better than the water up to the point where it would results in excessive overpressure and make it burst.
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u/der_Globetrotter 18h ago
I crossed an ice bridge (2km long, over a river) this winter and that's in-line with their instructions:
-keep 100m distance with the car in front
-drive at 15km/h or less
-watch for the air bubble under the ice and don't go beyond it
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u/penguins_are_mean 22h ago
It’s just going to make the next few inches of ice to form of poorer quality.
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u/inKev83 1d ago
The big question here is: WHY?
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u/EvenBiggerClown 1d ago
Guy filming this says something like "We're giving them fishes something to breathe"
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u/Anuclano 1d ago
How did those fishes survive there so far without people?
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u/shunyaananda 23h ago
I smell conspiracy
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u/Sirflow 23h ago
You guys still believe fish are real??
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u/teetering_bulb_dnd 22h ago
Octopus has 3 hearts and 9 brains. One of them is the central control brain. Instead of hemoglobin they have copper based protein to transfer oxygen so their blood is Blue. The world of water is more alien to us than the Moon or Mars bro. You are asking the right questions. Are fish real? What marine secrets the big Government hiding from us? What happened in the Bermuda triangle and why it stopped happening recently? We are just asking questions...
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u/TheNumber42Rocks 22h ago edited 21h ago
It’s actually one of the wonderful things about water. It’s one of the few substances that gets less dense when frozen and due to the ice floating and not sinking, fishes and other life was able to survive and thrive.
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u/Salty_Sprinkles_6482 18h ago
Conditions change by year. Thousands of Smaller lakes die out every year because water level are too low before freezing or the streams bringing oxygen into the lake freeze up. Some places add fountains or bubblers, but this is doing the same thing. Sometimes the lakes die out and they are just restocked or over time Mother Nature just does its thing until another bad winter.
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u/Voxlings 21h ago
Fewer survived.
Your comment is using the old "what about before vaccines?" argument. Doesn't work.
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u/theEndIsNigh_2025 1d ago
Me: But fish have survived for millions and millions of years without breathing air?
Guy: They would have died without me!
Me: Are you even listening?
Guy: I am their hero! I am their God!
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1d ago edited 23h ago
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u/QuirkyBus3511 21h ago
This does next to nothing for adding oxygen to the water. There needs to be water churn with bubbles.
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u/supernova45621 20h ago
Sparging (adding oxygen with bubbles like you mentioned) is definitely the quickest to get oxygen into a closed system of water. But lakes never really experience that. I’d generously say that he created an oxygen boundary layer of 1% of the lakes surface, for let’s say 5 minutes. That’s 5/60/24*0.01x100%=0.0000347% of the oxygen that a lake would normally get in one day of diffusion against a saturated boundary layer of air. So ya you’re right… sparge the lake if you’re really tryna do something.
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u/theEndIsNigh_2025 23h ago
I’ve seen a few fish in my days, and they all have the same expression. Nothing! And that leads me to some philosophical questioning…Can fish even be happy? What makes a fish happy? How do fish express happiness? Can humans interpret fish happiness? Would I even know if my fish was happy? Is my fish happy with the amount of butter I’m using and my selection of herbs?
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u/GayCatbirdd 22h ago
I have owned lots of bettas, fish although expressionless, like most animals that don’t use facial expressions to display non complex emotions, do display signs of happiness/distress/dislike through other body languages and behaviors, I do believe some smaller schooling fish are just NPC’s as they seem to blinding just follow each other but there are species like bettas, angelfish, hell even guppies seem to have a little going on in there, I have observed that seem to think more, but this is all anecdotal evidence from years of personal observation with fish that I owned myself. Bettas also seem to have a lot of facial expressions compared to other fish if you can even call it that, they flare to be aggressive/upset, they have lots of movement with their eyes, but again, animal body language depends on the animal and what we think is some sort of behavior may mean something else to the animal, its all about learning what they mean in their own ability to express themselves.
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u/Varnsturm 23h ago
You made me curious about intelligence in fish which led me to: Apparently manta rays are super smart among fish and some have even passed the mirror test, which is super cool and interesting. So I'd bet they can be happy.
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u/SkulduggeryIsAfoot 1d ago
Yes but on the other hand…why not? ❄️
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u/Nighteyes09 1d ago
Why shouldn't I force a rigid structure separating me from hypothermia and drowning to bend?
/s
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u/BlueEyedMalachi 1d ago
After all, why not? Why shouldn't I keep it? It's mine.... my... precious.
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u/SyntaxError79 1d ago
Came here to write this but found a fellow LOTR connoiseur.
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u/Affectionate_Tax3468 1d ago
Because thats an ecosystem and fucking around with it for no reason except clicks, upvotes and comments from 95% bots is something only an asshole would do?
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u/Holocene98 1d ago
It’s a frozen pond… with air under the ice. What the fuck is your point about an ecosystem? How would this even remotely affect anything?
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u/Affectionate_Tax3468 23h ago
Theres a plethora of fish and frogs hibernating under the ice.
Mixing the cooler water closer to the surface with warmer water down below is shit.
Pushing air, especially warm air, deep into the lower water areas is shit.
Noise is shit.
Is it really THAT hard to think for two seconds about anything that isnt about your personal fun?
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u/Connect_Rhubarb395 23h ago
Thank you for writing this. I would have written it otherwise. As kids we were taught to not break the ice on ponds because it can kill frogs and fish.
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u/SpaceShrimp 22h ago
The adults didn't want you to get wet, or didn't like what you were doing, and therefore told you a lie.
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u/Michaeli_Starky 1d ago
Fish sometimes die when the lake is fully frozen due to lack of oxygen.
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u/Sweaty-Still-3203 1d ago
Fishies like breathing too, but ice cap doesn't let in enough oxygen so they gotta do it themselves
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u/usrdef 1d ago
Just how it works.
Everything that can kill you comes from Austrailia.
India is responsible for our train videos
Africa is responsible for electricity videos
Russia is the WTF source.
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u/Neither_Sort_2479 1d ago
the guy sounds Ukrainian, but generally applicable too
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u/Ripkord77 1d ago
I dunno but... you get back to work and someone asks what you did over the weekend? Worth it.
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u/skr_replicator 1d ago
maybe to oxygexate it for the fishes to breathe or just because it looks cool... If it's the first then I wonder how they breather before the man.
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u/rawbleedingbait 23h ago
It was cut early. It's a very basic (and somewhat overly simplistic) representation of how queefs form.
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u/ExNihiloish 23h ago
With enough air pressure the sheet of ice can be used as an elevator to the moon.
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u/lukesparling 23h ago
Canadian here. This feels like a Canadian version of a floridaman headline waiting to happen. You don’t fuck around with ice. I’ve stood on enough ice to know that air underneath is far less stable than water. This seems like he’s asking for it to break underneath him. I hope he knows that lake well enough that it’s knee height where he’s standing or something.
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u/Danceking81 1d ago
That don't look safe.
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u/MysticalPengu 18h ago
Safety seems relative to the wanted outcome, if he’s wanting to fall into the water what safer way than making all the ice pre-stressed? Like ice anxiety
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u/CasualCaterpiller 1d ago
Do you want to fall through the ice? Because that’s how you fall through the ice.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TallEnoughJones 22h ago
But people sometimes die when they fall through the ice, and when that happens the fish don't help us
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u/thehollowshrine 1d ago
I swear I've seen this in some magical girl anime.
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u/EpicBlueDrop 23h ago
Magical girl anime? Shit. The way the water rippled under him in a ring reminded me of Dragon Ball Z.
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u/slaty_balls 16h ago
Anyone else waiting for the ice to crack and him take a plunge?
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u/Mobile_Magician4290 1d ago
Bro is risking his life to stand in the middle of the lake like that
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u/csmdds 21h ago
Why do I feel like the (unseen) end of the video will end up in r/Whatcouldgowrong?
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u/J-96788-EU 1d ago
Why?
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u/Master_Bayters 1d ago
To help fishes breathing.
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u/halflifer2k 1d ago
Smart man! And a master to boot! I’m still just a jr, but I hope to someday reach your level!
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u/CelticGhost93 19h ago
Can pls someone show me what happened after i realy want to verify my guess that all that air comes out as a mixture of water and air like a Geysire
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u/Impressive-Duck5004 14h ago
Absolutely nuts. The water is the only thing supporting the ice. You are just asking for trouble if you put a layer of air in there.
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u/not_that_guy_at_work 6h ago
That is epically stupid. It only serves to stress the structural integrity of the ice. Have fun with the frozen swamp-ass when you fall in.
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u/JustHereForKA 1d ago
This video is posted a lot with zero context and no explanation or follow up, so down votes from here on out.
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u/AwayEstablishment835 23h ago
Anybody gas a scientific explanation? And what will happen to the ice? Could he risk falling?
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u/Mediocre-Camp-5036 21h ago
I wonder if that would help prevent a freeze out. And help the fish survive?
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u/bryangcrane 15h ago
Is there an actual reason for this or is this more just me and the guys doing dumb stuff?? 😝
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u/Endepearreddit69 1h ago
looks hella sick but dangerous, then it looked like the water was fighting back then. interesting
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u/Orthae 1d ago
So, if I am not mistaken, adding extra air pressure under the ice, water being incompressable, this just forces extra pressure upwards against the ice, wouldn't this just only result in the ice become extra stressed by surface pressure and more prone to shatter and like...cause the people to fall through? Or would it just make the ice extra brittle with the layer of air between the water surface and the ice?
Besides hypothermia, and adding extra hazards for unknown other persons, what is the purpose here?
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u/PM_ME_UR_ROUND_ASS 7h ago
You're right about the physics - the air creates uneven pressure distribution and removes the buoyant support of water, so the ice loses structural integrity and becomes way more likley to fail suddenly (this is exactly why ice fishers are taught never to create air pockets under ice).
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u/One-Earth9294 1d ago
At a certain point the bubble is just like 'okay no more of that buddy'.
Seems like a good way to break the ice you're standing on using very little effort but I guess I don't understand the physics of ice that well. I'd just feel safer driving an SUV on that than I would doing this leaf blower thing.
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u/Away_Comfortable3131 1d ago
I personally wouldn't be standing in the middle of the lake while doing this
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u/tauntonlake 23h ago
That ice does not look nearly frozen enough, for him to be fucking around, walking on it.
This is the Darwin-level stuff that gets people killed. :\
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u/SopieMunkyy 23h ago
I don't understand science enough to know if this is risky or not, but it looks real neat!
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u/Vladislav20007 23h ago
he just said " hey, you wanna see something cool?" to all the fishes in the 500m radius.
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u/succored_word 23h ago
Seems like that would make the ice more likely to break. If the ice is sitting on water it's being propped up. If it's sitting on air, not so much...
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u/stampstock 23h ago
But why? Trying to suffocate fish? Trying to fall through the ice? Stupid human tricks?
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u/PseudoFenton 1d ago
But I want to see what it looks like when he turns it off damnit!!