The Mythbusters look at whether hydrogen caused the Hindenburg disaster
One of the best shows on television right now is Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. The premise of the show is that the hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, and their team, pick two or three urban legends or other ideas every episode and then try to bust them. They choose myths that can actually be tested, and then take a scientific approach to determine if they are true or not. In the past they've tested myths like the five second rule, daVinci's steam cannon and whether dropping a toaster in a bathtub would actually kill you.
Why am I writing about this here? Well we write many stories here about hydrogen and one frequent question from readers regards safety. Coming up in a new episode (airing next Wednesday, January 10 at 9pm EST), they will be looking at the most famous hydrogen related accident of all time, the crash of the Hindenburg. Adam and Jamie will testing whether hydrogen was really the cause of the accident or the construction of the zeppelin's skin. These guys are pretty thorough so it will be interesting to see what they learn.
[Source: Discovery Channel]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ian 8:30PM (1/06/2007)
Sign. This has already been done. On other shows. That answer is: no. A skin coated with aluminum oxide to reflect heat, coupled with static discharge and a potential differential between skin panels due to a rain soaked exterior resulted in a spark and ignition of the exterior skin which burned like solid rocket fuel. An investiagtion by the Germans at the time came to the same conclusions but was classified, only recently uncovered in archives. But I guess it is an urban ledgend since snything having to do with hydrogen automatically gets the ZOMG! HINDENBURG!!! OMFG!!! response from the ignorant lemming masses.
Reply
Patrick 6:47PM (1/08/2007)
I love the Mythbusters show, but I have to say that the show is certainly not scientific--entertaining and BASED on science, yes. But not scientific. Having viewed the trailer, it certainly doesn't look like they took the time to address items like the permeability of the airship's real fabric and the fact that helium can actually act as a flame retardant in the kind of experiment they've done.
I like a good demonstration, but this issue has already been put to bed as noted by Ian. Although some hydrogen from the Hindenburg surely burned, it was not the cause of the disaster.
Reply
mike 9:07PM (1/08/2007)
I don't mind the Mythbusters rehashing others' earlier experiments. I support anything that pulls the ignorant lemming masses away from the likes of Jerry Springer and the Crossing Over twerp.
Reply
frank1492 12:19PM (1/15/2007)
I don't think you need to be much of a scientist to understand that the hydrogen contributed in a huge way to this disaster. The flammability of the coating simply accelerated the burn-through of the fabric so ignition of the hydrogen could occur sooner.
They should have done one more experiment: Create a model with a simple cotton cover, pump hydrogen into that one and ignite the cotton. That would have determined that if the cotton burned you would eventually get an explosion of pretty much the intensity of anything they showed that involved hydrogen.
What is debatable, I agree, is if any of the proposed ignition sources, such as simple static electricity, would have been adequate to ignite the fabric if it didn't have a coating. Since no one knows exactly what the intensity of the original heat source was (since they don't know what it was) this question can't ever be answered. I don't believe this issue was addressed on the show, though I might have missed it.
The models that used various types of coatings without the hydrogen pump were clearly a waste of time, but, then again, the whole show is a waste of time most of the time anyway because the conclusions it draws are self-evident.
Reply