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Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

theguardian.com

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Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#51

Post by wyuenho »

thom wrote: post #36
wyuenho wrote: post #14

From the guidelines: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. HN really needs a European mod to maintain the quality of this board.

I think large-scale engineering failures in other disciplines are always of interest here.

It's interesting only if there's a detailed report on the reasons. Otherwise this piece is news is just a "oh", instead of a "a-ha".

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#52

Post by wyuenho »

iamben wrote: post #35
wyuenho wrote: post #14

From the guidelines: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. HN really needs a European mod to maintain the quality of this board.

There's an engineering angle here that I think a lot of us probably find interesting?

I guarantee you car crashes has more engineering angles than this. There's not even a post-mortem here.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#53

Post by peoplefromibiza »

I've been there so many times, every time I went to Berlin, sad news.

It looked pretty cool and was a good place to bring people who didn't know Berlin after a visit to the beautiful Pergamonmuseum, which is 5 minutes walk away.

But I went on the elevator only the first time, it was clear that that wasn't a good idea at all.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#54

Post by gambiting »

anenefan wrote: post #34

That's a real shame only a few fish survived. It's fortunate only two people hurt. That looks nasty from the picture. Maybe next time less brittle acrylic. Off the top of my head a 14 m high tower of water - there would have been approx 20 psi at the bottom of the tank.

Just fyi - acrylic is actually less brittle than glass.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#55

Post by Mikeb85 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #46
feb wrote: post #33

According to a german news report [1], it could be due to material fatigue. [1] https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2022/12/berlin-karl-li...

Fatigue from what? It's a stationary object housed indoors, not a car or plane that goes through several climatical, temperature and environmental changes to cause fatigue. Unless they were subjecting the tank to draining and filling cycles often, it seems more like a design/build fault that was a ticking time bomb from the start.

The fact an object is stationary doesn't mean forces aren't continuously being applied... Same goes for bridges and every load bearing object.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#56

Post by koheripbal »

rob74 wrote: post #38

Considering there was a hotel lobby under the aquarium, it's actually a miracle that only 2 people were hurt. Too bad for the fish though. Also, there's a sentiment of "how could this happen, it was only upgraded two years ago?!" in all the articles I have read so far - maybe it happened precisely because of that ? But let's see what the investigation will reveal...

No post body was provided.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#57

Post by Reason077 »

imhoguy wrote: post #19
jl6 wrote: post #3

Wow, how do you make pieces of glass that size?

They should use transparent aluminium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_materials#...

Modern sapphire glass (Al₂O₃) is basically transparent aluminium, and it is very strong. Probably way too expensive to make an aquarium out of it, though!

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#58

Post by throw6383878 »

koheripbal wrote: post #56
rob74 wrote: post #38

Considering there was a hotel lobby under the aquarium, it's actually a miracle that only 2 people were hurt. Too bad for the fish though. Also, there's a sentiment of "how could this happen, it was only upgraded two years ago?!" in all the articles I have read so far - maybe it happened precisely because of that ? But let's see what the investigation will reveal...

Quoted post unavailable.

There was first cold weather recently as well. November was VERY mild.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#59

Post by weinzierl »

feb wrote: post #33

According to a german news report [1], it could be due to material fatigue. [1] https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2022/12/berlin-karl-li...

Yes, that is widely reported now as a very preliminary cause. Also that it has been completely modernized in 2020. Here is a promotional video of the renovation activities: https://vimeo.com/530397162

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#60

Post by thom »

wyuenho wrote: post #51
thom wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think large-scale engineering failures in other disciplines are always of interest here.

It's interesting only if there's a detailed report on the reasons. Otherwise this piece is news is just a "oh", instead of a "a-ha".

I think we're richer for having this type of content, not least because someone has posted elsethread that the early signs point to material fatigue. The system works as far as I can see, and I think we're some way off the front page of HN being flooded by TikToks.
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