How to Film a Tornado

goneaway writes: "An interesting examination of the competitive world of filming tornadoes or "torn porn" as they call it over at the Atlantic. A fair amount of attention is given to the mechanics of filming and the inventions created to "safely" film while all hell is breaking loose."

Comments

Re:Crazy, DUMB S.O.B.

[wowbagger]

Figure it like this:

For the horizontal force of wind to equal the weight of the tank the surface area normal to the wind times the stagnation pressure of the wind must be greater than the weight of the tank, or 65 tons. Consider a 20 foot by 6 foot rectangle - smaller than an Abrams. Thats 120 square feet, or
17280 square inches. Now, for that area to have more than 65 tons of force, you need a stagnation pressure of 7.5 pounds per square inch. Now, what is the stagnation pressure of a 300 mile per hour wind? (I honestly don't know off the top of my head - I'm an EE, not a ME or AE).

Also realize this: once that tank starts to tip, then the wind is going to get a much better grip on it.

Being in the eye of a tornado is much like being next to a very large explosion, save that an explosion doesn't keep going on for several seconds.

True, once you started to move with the winds in the eye, the forces go down quite a bit. But would you REALLY try it? I mean, an Abrams might survive being hit with a anti-tank round, does that mean you would go seek them out? How would an Abrams fare against a half-ton telephone pole at 150 miles per hour? Just the momentum transfer would give you a mile per hour of velocity.

Also, would you want to deal with the pressure drop? I know a tank is reasonably air tight, but just how air tight is it? And how would your turbine fare with the air loss.

Not knocking the M1A1 - they are an impressive piece of engineering. But I STILL would run from a tornado...

Re:"suck

[Max the Merciless]

hehe, I've seen that .avi

They sure didn't have much trouble filming her!