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Seriously I'm it is my empirical opinion that you legitimately have the best. And by best I mean most novel topics and or subjects on youtube. . Like where the rubber meets the road of reality.!!! Bravo sir.! 👍👍🙏🍻
one thing i wanna know is if you shine a really bright torch on a candle flame then will the candle flame cast a shadow? if it does or doesnt can you explain how it works in a vid?
What's crazy is that this works so well that scientists were worried about people using it to control the weather in the papers I read about the effect.
Is this not also a visual effect that due to the oil the light sees a different medium and refracts differently hiding the waves? You could see that when you moved the camera the ways came back into the picture.
Oh my god finally. In my 12th grade physics, one of the practical applications of surface tension was to calm ocean waves. All of us students and the teacher was equally confused, and googling it didn't give answers. Thank you for solving a 6 year long mystery
It must have been nice to have Google while in school. With the Internet, I don't understand how every student doesn't have straight A's; sans laziness factor.
@@TheTechAdmin Google doesn't automatically make you remember things. It is good to look things up you don't have answers to but at the end of the day you still have to memorise and learn concepts. It is good for homework, though.
science truly does feel like magic sometimes. if someone wrote this in a fantasy book, where people drop this alchemical substance into the ocean to near-instantly calm the waves, i would say they are being too unrealistic
@@RP-vi8fx Right, so give me a reference. And even if these lifeboats carry oil. give me an example how they calmed the sea. lol. I've seen plenty of ppl selling magical ground level water/mine detecting devices, yet they're all just bullshit. LMAO. I can already see the news: These poor fishermen was caught in a storm, but they pored a few gallons of oil into the sea and was saved.
@@streight4lk You laugh at my point, yet can't support the point of the video furthering educating me, which just proves my original point. You're just a mindless viewer regurgitating whatever mindless matter the video spouted.
@@GrantEntwistle From my crude calculations at least 361.9 million liters if it was only a single nm thick *Don't know where the surface area came from, just googled for it, was 361.9 million km^2, 1nm is 1e-9 m so it cancels out the km^2 to m^2 conversion.
@@GrantEntwistle dunno but with your small monthly donation of 50 trillion dollars, we can find out how many barrels of crude oil it takes to destroy the ecosystem.
@@GrantEntwistle the ocean is 361 million square kilometers or 3.61 * 10^14 meters^2, the monolayer is around 1.6 nm or 1.6 * 10^-9 meters, so you need around 5,8 * 10^5 cubic meters of oil, or 580 million liters, multiplying by the density of 0.93 kg/liter, we get just over half a million ton of fish oil I think
The gulf of Mexico was as calm as a bathtub during the BP oil spill. Nobody talks about it, but I was out there in the golf, and I can tell you there wasn’t a single wave to be found.
I saw water like that before. It was on the day a tropical storm not hurricane was hitting thay day. We were supposed to head out dive and come back before it hit by noon. It came while we were diving. Anywho on the way out the ocean was like a bathtub. And u could see the storm on the distant horizon.
Now that everyone knows how carcinogenic animal/fish liver oils can be. Specially once oxidised under sun and in contact with windy air. Everyone also gets what a scandal of cancers it's been for more than 130 years. It's interesting what an 1857 doctor would've told this lad about ecology and blood poisoning
I have used a small amount of vegetable oil to prevent water from boiling over when cooking pasta for as long as I've been cooking. I think this explains why this trick works.
Doesn't these thing's means that "accidental" oil spills might actually be of benefits to their owners? Can it cause drought by reducing the amount of evaporation from sea water?! Or reducing ship travel time by calming ocean waves? Or destroying a country's marine life??! Huh, what's that black van doin under my window...
Ben Franklin, letter to William Brownrigg, 1773: "I then went to the Windward Side, where they [the waves] began to form; and there the Oil tho’ not more than a Tea Spoonful produced an instant Calm, over a Space several yards square, which spread amazingly, and extended itself gradually till it reached the Lee Side, making all that Quarter of the Pond, perhaps half an Acre, as smooth as a Looking Glass."
Edit: apparently this comment is spoiling the video before people can watch it, and I apologize for that. When I read the thumbnail, I totally thought you were pulling our chains, but the fact that this actually works is mind-blowing. This is the best real-world example of the butterfly effect I've ever seen
Using powder on water to measure the volume of drop of oil on a pin / needle was an experiment that I saw 50y ago. The oil spreads out forming a circle in the powder and the maths is simple to estimate the volume of the drop. I have known of the oil on water from my sailing days; I am very impressed by you experiment, I thought it would need a gallon of oil.
This used to be well known amongst sailors. Once a sailing yacht starts to get overpowered even with just small storm sails up, a "sea anchor" (like a small parachute) is let out via a line from the bow of the yacht for some distance, and sails taken down. This keeps the bow facing oncoming waves. If waves were breaking , a very small amount of oil could be released via the head (toilet) periodically, which would calm the sea as the yacht drifted downwind with the oil slick, bow on to the now-calmer waves.
I remember reading about this when I was younger, I believe it was in Graham Robinson’s account of his sailing voyage around the world. He would let out some oil in rough seas. I remember being confused by it. Now all these years later it makes sense.
At least one of your 'bow's should be 'stern'.. If the sea anchor is attached to the bow, the bow will face AWAY from oncoming waves. I think you mean the anchor was attached to the stern.
"While at sea in 1757, Franklin took particular interest in a stark difference between the wakes of certain ships compared to others. Franklin consulted his captain and learned that one ship’s cook threw refuse oil over the side of the boat, turning the water tranquil-a phenomenon he had likewise learned about in his youth from the writings of Pliny, the ancient natural historian. It was at sea that Franklin fully contemplated “the wonderful Quietness of Oil on agitated water"
Also worth noting is that the danger to ships in the sea isn't really the size of a wave, but the wave breaking onto or into the side of a boat. The oil film helps prevent waves from breaking, meaning that while the waves are still tall they aren't as 'pointy', or steep - and thus much less dangerous.
Not sure they need it for plucking people out with helicopters. Admittedly not sure what kinds of rescues they have to do from time to time, I suppose it varies greatly but I just don't see them needing this kind of thing anymore. That and the ships that do sink these days are so far away from help they wouldn't reach them in time for the oil to do anything useful. I suppose if anything, ships that are worried about rough waters could have oil on board themselves maybe. But not sure how long it would keep them safe from the storm.
And lifejackets should have a slow release supply. Even if it doesn't affect the water to the point of making rescue easier, the giant patch of water that is less covered in white horses would be far more visible than a tiny orange spot.
I actually wasn't expecting it to work that well either. I had tried it at home with a fan over some water and it was barely a noticeable difference, but I thought I would try it for real at the lake and I was blown away at the effect. So it really works better over large area.
@@TheActionLabThat is really interesting, how difficult it was to represent on a smaller scale, I wonder how many effects haven't been fully studied thanks to being hard to try on said small scale.
Learnt about this back in my school days many many years ago. Apparently certain ships and lifeboats were required to carry oil that could be slowly released into the sea during storms in order to do exactly this. Utterly amazing that something so small can do so much!
Yachtsmen in the 1950s carried perforated bags in which were rags which could be soaked in oil and which could be trailed from a boat when stopped in a storm. This created a slick to windward. I seem to remember the use of oil is described in the book Heavy Weather Sailing, and in 19th century sailing books such as the Voyage of the Tilikum and Sailing Alone around the World.
oil dispersal on the water was a standard heavy weather tactic used by captains back in the day. Ships carried barrels of oil specifically for this. The oil was dispensed by continious drip buckets.
I've seen this while lake fishing. After casting a hook with potski's eggs, there'd be a smooth spot about 8 feet around. And that was just from the residue on two little eggs.
One of your best vids yet. Keep this format please. The goal of 10 min clearly can push you to fill it with oodles of notes and facts as you've demonstrated.
Ok, I have to admit not often I see something on the internet, that is really new that I didn't see before. Everything seems to be just a re-upload about the same phenomena over and over again. But this I truly see for the first time.
Benjamin Franklin was notorious for using oil to calm water. He described this in his autobiography (great read). He loved it so much that he had the top of his walking cane turned into a small oil container so that we would have oil on hand (or under) at all times.... Great video demonstration. As I recall, Ben used whale oil.
Fascinating! I did not realise that the type of oil had a measurable impact. I recall a TV demonstration on a lake in the UK many years ago. They rowed out, tipped a small amount of oil over the boat and waited as the flatness spread out from them. I don't recall any mention of the type of oil (mineral vs. vegetable/animal)
This solves a long standing personal mystery that I've had for years (at least, I think it does.) My grand father lived near me and had a pond that was a few acres in size. I spent many summer days fishing on the lake. One of the things I noticed, and still have noticed, is that from time to time there would be patches like this on the water. The water would be more still in a some-what circular area, and the rest of the pond would have waves you'd expect depending on the wind. I'm guessing that something either died and seeped oil OR it might have been from bait, from time to time. Regardless, I'm assuming the calm patches were from some form of minimal oil introduced to the surface.
I reside close to the Mediterranean Sea, where I often ponder the occurrence of smooth patches on its calm surface. after watching this video, I've come to understand that these patches are likely caused by motor oil from small boats. Wow! I didn't expect that to be the reason.
Impressive experiment, it's intriguing how a small amount of oil can calm the waves. The underlying science behind it is well explained and the historical anecdotes really make it more interesting.
Over 50 years and never heard of this phenomenon, super interesting and very well explained, also the graphic explaining the feedback loop, well done! Thankyou
They did this in my hometown with lower quality whale oil. The good stuff was very useful but the remaining bits were stored for calming the waves on the port and letting the fishing vessels go in or out
My guess at 2:14 the feedback effect of air pushing water and the fact that the oil not mixing with water would act like a brake dragging along so the further it moves it will narrow down but the speed won’t be the same as the water around.
Make it a bit thicker, ya it makes sense that it wouldn't get pushed around as much- kinda like turning the ocean into temporary mud, the wind doesn't blow mud around so much and a thicker liquid should behave similarly. I've wondered about this for a long time- neat to see that someone actually did an experiment to test if this is real. I thought it'd take a lot more than that to calm the water though. That's kinda crazy. Seems like rescue ships and the coast guard should carry a bit of oil to drop around hazard areas! Thought I was subbed already... either way I am now!
Over here in the UK we used to have a BBC2 science program in the 1990's called 'Local Heroes' (by Adam Hart Davis) and this oil-on-water effect was detailed in one of the episodes (some of the episodes are here on TH-cam). On one of his visits to Britain, Benjamin Franklin stayed in the Lake District with William Brownrigg and they performed this experiment on Derwentwater. Lakes and ponds are one thing but to know this effect has been witnessed for the last two and a half millennia on rough seas is mind blowing... thankyou for making this effect more widely known.
I've been dumping my used motor oil in the ocean for decades. People always give me sh!t and never believe me when I tell them why. Thanks for setting the record straight.
Emulsifiers are a huge component of oil processing for all the reasons mentioned in the video. I used to work a company that measured turbulent flow without cutting the pipe by using proprietary hardware that can read the turbulent eddies and we often experienced with adding emulsifiers to steady the flow better.
Spraying oil onto the sea to flatten it out has been used by salvage vessels recovering wrecks for some time. It's mentioned in Wilbur Smith's novel, "Hungry as the sea".
Didn't get that far in the video yet, but I'm guessing you're talking about GroundNews? It's useful to see the differences in how different people with different political views report on events. And how are you planning to avoid main stream media, apart from going completely off the grid?
@@ThePhoenixSlayereveryone knows social media is where the real news source is lol. Seriously people need to stop being addicted to shit that just reaffirms their existing viewpoint and learn to get several points of view combined with some critical thinking skills. Sadly most won’t and will just let whoever they like the most influence their point of view.
@@ericwazhung Well as long as you treat every news article like you treat this program, you probably don't need it anyway. Just a disclaimer that I don't actually use it, but I'm pointing out that OP's opinion is a bit misguided.
This is one of the craziest science videos I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. I just can't believe I've never heard of this! Thanks for demonstrating and explaining so well!
I read about this technique in a very old power squadron manual, thought it was awesome but not something I'd ever be in a situation to actually use. Really cool
This property has been used in underwater oil prospecting from satellites. Natural oil seeps create patches of somewhat calmer water. With the right radar wavelength those sea surface patches show up quite well.
Look I know it's fine but there's something really funny about like, "WHAT'S UP TH-cam TODAY I'M DUMPING A BUNCH OF OIL IN THE OCEAN." Great vid bro :)
I live on a pig farm and one day my little brother told me to buy a bottle of vegetable oil. He poured a portion of it in the slurry pit, and the effect was great. Much less foam was forming, which means the slurry tanker can be filled better, saving time and diesel.
Swimming pool has lane dividers that quell the waves, there are quite a few different designs of plastic dampers. Our 50m pool can be divided in to three smaller pools that can have different depths. The extra pool walls rise up with hydraulics, they do this most days at 9am and it takes 30min for the staff to deploy three sets of shorter lane dividers.
Dude!! This is very informative, I didn't know this could happen, probably most people on the earth don't know this. Great work with another exceptional video👍
So when children were kidnapped by the tens of thousands and kept in church run concentration camp "schools", was Jesus oiling the hearts of the thousands of dead children, the tens of thousands of survivors, or the church members torturing and killing children for not being white?
I first noticed this a few years back when a girl covered in sunscreen walked into the ocean. It spread very quickly. Then I imagine that our entire ocean might have a slick on it that makes it less choppy at a small scale but then I also saw how that could make certain types of tsunami (like a resonance tsunami from an undersea quake) much bigger because the small scale choppiness would actually help to de-cohere a resonance wave and thus make it smaller. Hope that makes sense.
We used to use something similar for swimming pools, it was used for the tiles where the water rested but has the same effect. Was very satisfying in a swimming pool
Fish oil in the ocean is probably the opposite of the saying "like a fish out of water" especially when you have 5 gallons of it in a 20sq km area of ocean for a rescue operation.
@@tiagotiagot Hyperbole aside, dead fish tend to rise to the surface and rot before sinking, releasing a lot of oil and fat in to the water in the process. In fact, chopping up salmon and letting the hunks sit in water is actually how salmon oil is extracted, since it just leeches out and floats on top. Back of the napkin math and a few Google searches indicates that 5 gallons is roughly equivalent to 300 Atlantic salmon. This effect leaves nanometer thin layers of the oil on the surface, meaning 2 dead fish in my neighborhood pond would have a more severe impact (a much thicker layer) on the pond than it would have in the ocean. This is not to say that there is absolutely *no*, effect on the environment. There very clearly is at least one significant impact. However, the biological impact is minimal to non-existent in the quantities present should something like this be utilized for an occasional rescue operation like described. Fish oil is not a foreign substance to the ocean, and this effect dissipates rather quickly in a large body of water like the ocean.
@@noahhounshel104What about stuff like algae bloom or some other similar effect with microbes or something; a big enough spill is not enough to disrupt the chemical balance in small region due to excess or reduction in oxygen or other substances due to consumption or excretion by microrganisms that might feast on the oil or have some their functions disrupted by it? But either way, my original comment still stands, some (not all, but some) natural substances can be hazardous in certain circumstances (or really, pretty much all if you go to extremes like water intoxication in humans, too much oxygen making things more easily ignitable etc).
It's usually the breaking of the "smaller" waves that's the most danger. The underlying long period swells that originates hundreds to thousands of km away will still remain. They will not readily break without wind effects in water deeper than half its wavelength and is much easier to deal with when in smaller ships.
There is a fishing technique in greece called "pirofani" where the fishermen drop small rocks with oil in the sea in order to calm it down and see through with strong light during the night,Then they use spear to catch the fish.
Stay informed on breaking news by subscribing through my link ground.news/actionlab to receive 30% off the Vantage Subscription which is about $6/month for unlimited access to all the features to better your news consumption experience.
Thank you for sharing our mission Action Lab!
If anyone's interested in getting the full picture of issues like the one in this video, check out the link in the description and let us know if you have any questions.
Seriously I'm it is my empirical opinion that you legitimately have the best. And by best I mean most novel topics and or subjects on youtube. . Like where the rubber meets the road of reality.!!!
Bravo sir.! 👍👍🙏🍻
now no surfers will ever mess with me again!!!
one thing i wanna know is if you shine a really bright torch on a candle flame then will the candle flame cast a shadow? if it does or doesnt can you explain how it works in a vid?
Make Black Spaghetti from JoJo's Bizzare Adventure
What's crazy is that this works so well that scientists were worried about people using it to control the weather in the papers I read about the effect.
Could it be used to control erosion?
Yes, could you please change the local weather, that less clouds form above the ocean surface near the beach and we have more sunshine ?
Would it stop people hearing me fart in the bath?
Is this not also a visual effect that due to the oil the light sees a different medium and refracts differently hiding the waves? You could see that when you moved the camera the ways came back into the picture.
Nobody tell China
I hope this exploit won't get patched in the next update
Those developers only care for money, they won’t listen to us😢
@@doob.God is chill tho, He wont patch this.
@Onlyoneway.You to what? Please finish your sentence.
@@TheTechAdmin hes also hoping that it wont get patched next update
We are bugs
Oh my god finally. In my 12th grade physics, one of the practical applications of surface tension was to calm ocean waves. All of us students and the teacher was equally confused, and googling it didn't give answers. Thank you for solving a 6 year long mystery
It must be grade 11, as I just finished it and learned that in surface tension.
It also comes up in a Jules Verne novel, can't remember which one.
Also read about when hurcanes we’re getting bad 10-15 years ago
It must have been nice to have Google while in school.
With the Internet, I don't understand how every student doesn't have straight A's; sans laziness factor.
@@TheTechAdmin Google doesn't automatically make you remember things. It is good to look things up you don't have answers to but at the end of the day you still have to memorise and learn concepts. It is good for homework, though.
It's blowing my mind that so little can create that big of an area of effect.
For real! But like he said, the fish oil tends to form a monolayer - a layer one molecule thick. That makes a little oil go a long way!
Now think of a crude oil spill
yea all the rainbows that are on a large area of the water, really thin film that creates rainbow@@christow7989
@@christow79896:47
me when farting
science truly does feel like magic sometimes. if someone wrote this in a fantasy book, where people drop this alchemical substance into the ocean to near-instantly calm the waves, i would say they are being too unrealistic
@patrick-quora I am amazed at your criteria. "It can only be true if I have heard of it before." Lmao! 😭😭😂😂
@patrick-quora modern lifeboats carry oil for this exact purpose....
@@RP-vi8fx Right, so give me a reference. And even if these lifeboats carry oil. give me an example how they calmed the sea. lol. I've seen plenty of ppl selling magical ground level water/mine detecting devices, yet they're all just bullshit.
LMAO. I can already see the news: These poor fishermen was caught in a storm, but they pored a few gallons of oil into the sea and was saved.
@@streight4lk You laugh at my point, yet can't support the point of the video furthering educating me, which just proves my original point. You're just a mindless viewer regurgitating whatever mindless matter the video spouted.
woah there using big words, your points will surely come across well you snob
A sinking boat raises the flag "I'M SINKING!"
A passing-by boat raises the flag "NOT MY PROBLEM"
...a third boat raises the flag "ARE YOU SINKING WAT I'M SINKING...?"
I was fully expecting that when I watched the video.
Hallo! Dis is the German Coast Guard. Vat are you sinking about?
And that's the origin of getting flagged.
the neighbouring ship raised the flags i over s which means 'skill issue'
me dumping 5 million tons of crude oil into the ocean: "my Amazon package will never sink now."
How much would it take to actually coat the ocean?
@@GrantEntwistle From my crude calculations at least 361.9 million liters if it was only a single nm thick
*Don't know where the surface area came from, just googled for it, was 361.9 million km^2, 1nm is 1e-9 m so it cancels out the km^2 to m^2 conversion.
@@GrantEntwistle dunno but with your small monthly donation of 50 trillion dollars, we can find out how many barrels of crude oil it takes to destroy the ecosystem.
@@GrantEntwistle the ocean is 361 million square kilometers or 3.61 * 10^14 meters^2, the monolayer is around 1.6 nm or 1.6 * 10^-9 meters, so you need around 5,8 * 10^5 cubic meters of oil, or 580 million liters, multiplying by the density of 0.93 kg/liter, we get just over half a million ton of fish oil I think
i think that is the wrong oil. needs to be fish or vegetable oil
The gulf of Mexico was as calm as a bathtub during the BP oil spill. Nobody talks about it, but I was out there in the golf, and I can tell you there wasn’t a single wave to be found.
This was my first thought when I saw the thumbnail. Thanks so much for confirming it.
It was! Ive never had such a smooth boat ride as the ferry to gavelston island around 2009
I saw water like that before. It was on the day a tropical storm not hurricane was hitting thay day. We were supposed to head out dive and come back before it hit by noon. It came while we were diving. Anywho on the way out the ocean was like a bathtub. And u could see the storm on the distant horizon.
Now that everyone knows how carcinogenic animal/fish liver oils can be. Specially once oxidised under sun and in contact with windy air. Everyone also gets what a scandal of cancers it's been for more than 130 years. It's interesting what an 1857 doctor would've told this lad about ecology and blood poisoning
Gulf, not golf the sport
2:00 it took quite some time to realize the mirror-finish was NOT the bank of snow, but a near perfect reflection of it!
same
Same. I didn't see anything at first; just saw a bunch of disturbed water.
SAME i was like wtf is he talking about
wtf...it seems so simple, yet in all my years I've never heard of this. Thank you!
Used to be common knowledge amongst ocean sailors... mostly the cruising folks.
@@maxhugenWas the reason why it works common knowledge?
@@DrakonBlake I can't speak for others, but I certainly did not know!
Never read... Jules Verne?
I havent watched the video yet, But if this is about putting Oil into the water to calm the seas its an old Sea dogs tale, and not actually real.
I have used a small amount of vegetable oil to prevent water from boiling over when cooking pasta for as long as I've been cooking. I think this explains why this trick works.
it also works a bit like a lid and prevents water from evaporating, thus reaching boiling temperature faster
I did that too thanks for reminding me I had fogotten
Ahhhh it makes sense, i always thought that was so the noodles didnt stick if they cooled off
Doesn't these thing's means that "accidental" oil spills might actually be of benefits to their owners? Can it cause drought by reducing the amount of evaporation from sea water?! Or reducing ship travel time by calming ocean waves? Or destroying a country's marine life??! Huh, what's that black van doin under my window...
@@nobodykayaks1041 Definitely why I do it so everything else everyone has said is just a sweet bonus to me haha
Ben Franklin, letter to William Brownrigg, 1773: "I then went to the Windward Side, where they [the waves] began to form; and there the Oil tho’ not more than a Tea Spoonful produced an instant Calm, over a Space several yards square, which spread amazingly, and extended itself gradually till it reached the Lee Side, making all that Quarter of the Pond, perhaps half an Acre, as smooth as a Looking Glass."
Edit: apparently this comment is spoiling the video before people can watch it, and I apologize for that.
When I read the thumbnail, I totally thought you were pulling our chains, but the fact that this actually works is mind-blowing. This is the best real-world example of the butterfly effect I've ever seen
Yes exactly, when he told that anecdote i was convinced it was bs
I think I first read about it in some Jules Verne's novel. Sailors knew this trick and used for centuries.
@@d4slaimlessand now as a species we are getting more and more uninformed.
But is the nuclear war head not the best example? One man sized bomb to level an entire city?
That really is the best physical analogy of the butterfly effect.. Crazy he used such a small amount of oil to effect so much
Using powder on water to measure the volume of drop of oil on a pin / needle was an experiment that I saw 50y ago. The oil spreads out forming a circle in the powder and the maths is simple to estimate the volume of the drop.
I have known of the oil on water from my sailing days; I am very impressed by you experiment, I thought it would need a gallon of oil.
This used to be well known amongst sailors. Once a sailing yacht starts to get overpowered even with just small storm sails up, a "sea anchor" (like a small parachute) is let out via a line from the bow of the yacht for some distance, and sails taken down. This keeps the bow facing oncoming waves. If waves were breaking , a very small amount of oil could be released via the head (toilet) periodically, which would calm the sea as the yacht drifted downwind with the oil slick, bow on to the now-calmer waves.
I remember reading about this when I was younger, I believe it was in Graham Robinson’s account of his sailing voyage around the world. He would let out some oil in rough seas. I remember being confused by it. Now all these years later it makes sense.
At least one of your 'bow's should be 'stern'.. If the sea anchor is attached to the bow, the bow will face AWAY from oncoming waves. I think you mean the anchor was attached to the stern.
@@danstheman33 Wrong. In rough weather, the sea anchor is attached to the bow to create *drag* and thus keep the yacht's bow facing the waves.
"While at sea in 1757, Franklin took particular interest in a stark difference between the wakes of certain ships compared to others. Franklin consulted his captain and learned that one ship’s cook threw refuse oil over the side of the boat, turning the water tranquil-a phenomenon he had likewise learned about in his youth from the writings of Pliny, the ancient natural historian. It was at sea that Franklin fully contemplated “the wonderful Quietness of Oil on agitated water"
Also worth noting is that the danger to ships in the sea isn't really the size of a wave, but the wave breaking onto or into the side of a boat. The oil film helps prevent waves from breaking, meaning that while the waves are still tall they aren't as 'pointy', or steep - and thus much less dangerous.
The Coast Guard just needs to carry a 5 gal bucket of fish oil with them on rescue missions. Easy peasy.
This needs traction..
Also,.... life saving gear should be equipped with a small flask or capsule, maybe? Baywatch, where are you?😅
Not sure they need it for plucking people out with helicopters. Admittedly not sure what kinds of rescues they have to do from time to time, I suppose it varies greatly but I just don't see them needing this kind of thing anymore. That and the ships that do sink these days are so far away from help they wouldn't reach them in time for the oil to do anything useful.
I suppose if anything, ships that are worried about rough waters could have oil on board themselves maybe. But not sure how long it would keep them safe from the storm.
And lifejackets should have a slow release supply. Even if it doesn't affect the water to the point of making rescue easier, the giant patch of water that is less covered in white horses would be far more visible than a tiny orange spot.
Funny at first, but then, actually not a bad idea. @@agsystems8220
I Started watching your videos recently. These videos are really knowledgeable. I appreciate your work man. Keep it up!
In French we have the expression "une mer d'huile" which we use when the water (ocean, lake etc.) is like a mirror.
Wow, I wasn't expecting it to actually work!
I actually wasn't expecting it to work that well either. I had tried it at home with a fan over some water and it was barely a noticeable difference, but I thought I would try it for real at the lake and I was blown away at the effect. So it really works better over large area.
@@TheActionLabThat is really interesting, how difficult it was to represent on a smaller scale, I wonder how many effects haven't been fully studied thanks to being hard to try on said small scale.
The visual at the end describing the feedback loop is excellent!
Learnt about this back in my school days many many years ago. Apparently certain ships and lifeboats were required to carry oil that could be slowly released into the sea during storms in order to do exactly this. Utterly amazing that something so small can do so much!
Yachtsmen in the 1950s carried perforated bags in which were rags which could be soaked in oil and which could be trailed from a boat when stopped in a storm. This created a slick to windward. I seem to remember the use of oil is described in the book Heavy Weather Sailing, and in 19th century sailing books such as the Voyage of the Tilikum and Sailing Alone around the World.
oil dispersal on the water was a standard heavy weather tactic used by captains back in the day. Ships carried barrels of oil specifically for this. The oil was dispensed by continious drip buckets.
I've seen this while lake fishing. After casting a hook with potski's eggs, there'd be a smooth spot about 8 feet around. And that was just from the residue on two little eggs.
Fellow fisherman as well and always wondered about that.
One of your best vids yet. Keep this format please. The goal of 10 min clearly can push you to fill it with oodles of notes and facts as you've demonstrated.
"You can see the smoothness spread out in a semicircle from where I put it in."
Wise words to be remembered by every husband.
That's the coolest sh!t i've learned this year
Ok, I have to admit not often I see something on the internet, that is really new that I didn't see before. Everything seems to be just a re-upload about the same phenomena over and over again. But this I truly see for the first time.
It's like that famous Simon and Garfunkel song, "Fish Oil Over Troubled Waters".
"Hello fish oil my old friend"
@@rodschmidt8952meoww😮
Benjamin Franklin was notorious for using oil to calm water. He described this in his autobiography
(great read). He loved it so much that he had the top of his walking cane turned into a small oil container so that we would have oil on hand (or under) at all times.... Great video demonstration. As I recall, Ben used whale oil.
My dude here is getting better at making awesome videos, the infographics wow!!!
Fascinating! I did not realise that the type of oil had a measurable impact.
I recall a TV demonstration on a lake in the UK many years ago. They rowed out, tipped a small amount of oil over the boat and waited as the flatness spread out from them.
I don't recall any mention of the type of oil (mineral vs. vegetable/animal)
Alright, I’ve been watching for a while and I’m gonna go ahead and subscribe. I’m surprised, engaged, amused, entertained, this is cool.
This solves a long standing personal mystery that I've had for years (at least, I think it does.) My grand father lived near me and had a pond that was a few acres in size. I spent many summer days fishing on the lake. One of the things I noticed, and still have noticed, is that from time to time there would be patches like this on the water. The water would be more still in a some-what circular area, and the rest of the pond would have waves you'd expect depending on the wind. I'm guessing that something either died and seeped oil OR it might have been from bait, from time to time. Regardless, I'm assuming the calm patches were from some form of minimal oil introduced to the surface.
I reside close to the Mediterranean Sea, where I often ponder the occurrence of smooth patches on its calm surface. after watching this video, I've come to understand that these patches are likely caused by motor oil from small boats. Wow! I didn't expect that to be the reason.
I know I got a lot to learn about the world, but you just blew my mind! Thank You!
Impressive experiment, it's intriguing how a small amount of oil can calm the waves. The underlying science behind it is well explained and the historical anecdotes really make it more interesting.
this one was both fascinating and mind-blowing! thanks!
Over 50 years and never heard of this phenomenon, super interesting and very well explained, also the graphic explaining the feedback loop, well done! Thankyou
They did this in my hometown with lower quality whale oil. The good stuff was very useful but the remaining bits were stored for calming the waves on the port and letting the fishing vessels go in or out
Whale oil?
@@bertiesmith3021 You dump chunks of whale fat into a pot and slowly heat it until it is a goo. Whale fat was also used for soap and illumination
@@VictorGarciaRI’m being hopeful that you don’t do this any more.
Never knew this. What's even wilder is the incredibly small quantity of oil that was used, yet was able to calm a large portion of the water.
I would have never believed this without the amazing camera angles. Thank you!!!
The oceans can have a little oil, as a treat
My guess at 2:14 the feedback effect of air pushing water and the fact that the oil not mixing with water would act like a brake dragging along so the further it moves it will narrow down but the speed won’t be the same as the water around.
It's been a long time since I got such a new and and just mind blowing information. I was really excited to watch him revealing the secret.
Absolutely incredible. What an episode.
I had no idea that this was even a thing.
Every rescue boat/helicopter should have a bucket of fish oil on board
Vegetable oil would be better. Catching the fish to make the oil isn't very sustainable
@@ghostratsarahI feel like fish oil is the least polluting though, since it's just dead fish, which the ocean already has trillions of
too much oil makes the effect worse
A MAN HAS FALLEN INTO THE RIVER IN LEGO CITY
POUR THE NEW RESCUE FISH OIL
@@ghostratsarah Fish regenerate, it's the definition of sustainable
I love that I have never heard about this before. Amazing.
Over 20 years in the Navy and I never knew this. Awesome!
It calms down because old Greek gods like oil in their salad so they get too distracted by munching to do anything else. Much less a storm.
Makes sense.
😂
Poseidon loves his fish oil
this was a really interesting video with great storytelling, keep up the good work!
Nice video sir ❤❤ love you from India 🇮🇳🇮🇳❤❤❤
I too neighbour
If a sailor spoke me about he did this and once saw the kraken I would trust more in the kraken fact...
We appreciate how well you articulate your insights. Keep up the good work.
Make it a bit thicker, ya it makes sense that it wouldn't get pushed around as much- kinda like turning the ocean into temporary mud, the wind doesn't blow mud around so much and a thicker liquid should behave similarly. I've wondered about this for a long time- neat to see that someone actually did an experiment to test if this is real. I thought it'd take a lot more than that to calm the water though. That's kinda crazy. Seems like rescue ships and the coast guard should carry a bit of oil to drop around hazard areas! Thought I was subbed already... either way I am now!
9:30 the best line ❤❤❤
At first I was like "Man, I hate it when a video starts with a mini demonstration that will clearly not work and then they'll escalate" but wtf
Is it possible that jesus dumped a vase of fish oil and prayed to God, before commanding the ocean to be calm? Who wouldve known? It's a Miracle!
Over here in the UK we used to have a BBC2 science program in the 1990's called 'Local Heroes' (by Adam Hart Davis) and this oil-on-water effect was detailed in one of the episodes (some of the episodes are here on TH-cam). On one of his visits to Britain, Benjamin Franklin stayed in the Lake District with William Brownrigg and they performed this experiment on Derwentwater.
Lakes and ponds are one thing but to know this effect has been witnessed for the last two and a half millennia on rough seas is mind blowing... thankyou for making this effect more widely known.
I've been dumping my used motor oil in the ocean for decades. People always give me sh!t and never believe me when I tell them why. Thanks for setting the record straight.
Emulsifiers are a huge component of oil processing for all the reasons mentioned in the video. I used to work a company that measured turbulent flow without cutting the pipe by using proprietary hardware that can read the turbulent eddies and we often experienced with adding emulsifiers to steady the flow better.
Youd think there would already be tons of fish oil in the sea
Spraying oil onto the sea to flatten it out has been used by salvage vessels recovering wrecks for some time. It's mentioned in Wilbur Smith's novel, "Hungry as the sea".
How much fish oil do i need to calm the pacific ocean?
8:13 ¿so dhe oil lubrikates dhe surfis ov dhe water, making it so dhat wind kant drag it along az eazily?
Rather than have an app to help choose whose propaganda to follow, would it not be better to ignore all Main Stream Media?
no
Not only Main Stream Media Puts up propaganda.
I think they probably put up less.
Didn't get that far in the video yet, but I'm guessing you're talking about GroundNews? It's useful to see the differences in how different people with different political views report on events. And how are you planning to avoid main stream media, apart from going completely off the grid?
@@ThePhoenixSlayerSounds promising, but I find it rather hard to believe it doesn't have its own agenda/bias.
@@ThePhoenixSlayereveryone knows social media is where the real news source is lol. Seriously people need to stop being addicted to shit that just reaffirms their existing viewpoint and learn to get several points of view combined with some critical thinking skills. Sadly most won’t and will just let whoever they like the most influence their point of view.
@@ericwazhung Well as long as you treat every news article like you treat this program, you probably don't need it anyway. Just a disclaimer that I don't actually use it, but I'm pointing out that OP's opinion is a bit misguided.
After watching all your videos for months...this is the best one.
Sacrifice a soul?? The god eat the sacrifice. mmmm thank you for your sacrifice. And the god will calm the seas.
"No no, not a 'soul', I meant a 'sole'! You know, the fish? Dumb humans!" - some old god
This is one of the craziest science videos I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. I just can't believe I've never heard of this! Thanks for demonstrating and explaining so well!
Another brilliant video.... keep up the good work... Always entertaining and educational.
I read about this technique in a very old power squadron manual, thought it was awesome but not something I'd ever be in a situation to actually use. Really cool
This property has been used in underwater oil prospecting from satellites. Natural oil seeps create patches of somewhat calmer water. With the right radar wavelength those sea surface patches show up quite well.
3:45-4:05 how does it work for sand dunes forming in deserts?
8:43 I love this animated graph!!!!!! More like this please - non-linear models.
Look I know it's fine but there's something really funny about like, "WHAT'S UP TH-cam TODAY I'M DUMPING A BUNCH OF OIL IN THE OCEAN."
Great vid bro :)
Crazy I did not think that this would actually happen!
6:02 ¿wy doez dhat mean dhat dhe surfis tenshin near dhe tip iz lower dhan at dhe base?
I love the cruel irony that oil spills from capsized vessels end up fixing the problem the caused them.
hoping they spilled the right oil
I've seen the oil/wave phenomenon many times. Thanks for revealing how it actually takes place.
I live on a pig farm and one day my little brother told me to buy a bottle of vegetable oil. He poured a portion of it in the slurry pit, and the effect was great. Much less foam was forming, which means the slurry tanker can be filled better, saving time and diesel.
This is THE MOST INSANE thing I've ever seen in TH-cam science video. Absolutely amazing.😮
Swimming pool has lane dividers that quell the waves, there are quite a few different designs of plastic dampers.
Our 50m pool can be divided in to three smaller pools that can have different depths. The extra pool walls rise up with hydraulics, they do this most days at 9am and it takes 30min for the staff to deploy three sets of shorter lane dividers.
Dude!! This is very informative, I didn't know this could happen, probably most people on the earth don't know this. Great work with another exceptional video👍
This was really good, thank you!!!
In Greece, we have an expression for when the sea is really calm, we say "the sea is oil".
Among life's storms, a little oil of the Holy Spirit's presence is all is needed to calm the raging seas
So when children were kidnapped by the tens of thousands and kept in church run concentration camp "schools", was Jesus oiling the hearts of the thousands of dead children, the tens of thousands of survivors, or the church members torturing and killing children for not being white?
This is freaking me out to see you at this reservoir. No wonder I caught no fish when I went there😂.
The sea can have some oil, as a treat
So now whenever I want to take a beautiful picture with a reflection in the water I have to keep fish oil in my pocket.
I first noticed this a few years back when a girl covered in sunscreen walked into the ocean. It spread very quickly. Then I imagine that our entire ocean might have a slick on it that makes it less choppy at a small scale but then I also saw how that could make certain types of tsunami (like a resonance tsunami from an undersea quake) much bigger because the small scale choppiness would actually help to de-cohere a resonance wave and thus make it smaller. Hope that makes sense.
This was amazing!
I'd never heard of this, truly fascinating. Thankyou for the practical demonstration and clear explanation.
We used to use something similar for swimming pools, it was used for the tiles where the water rested but has the same effect. Was very satisfying in a swimming pool
The wrong kind of natural substance in the wrong place can still be bad for the environment; being natural doesn't always mean it's safe.
Fish oil in the ocean is probably the opposite of the saying "like a fish out of water" especially when you have 5 gallons of it in a 20sq km area of ocean for a rescue operation.
@@noahhounshel104Do fishes excrete oil at such high volumes and concentrations normally?
@@tiagotiagot Hyperbole aside, dead fish tend to rise to the surface and rot before sinking, releasing a lot of oil and fat in to the water in the process. In fact, chopping up salmon and letting the hunks sit in water is actually how salmon oil is extracted, since it just leeches out and floats on top.
Back of the napkin math and a few Google searches indicates that 5 gallons is roughly equivalent to 300 Atlantic salmon. This effect leaves nanometer thin layers of the oil on the surface, meaning 2 dead fish in my neighborhood pond would have a more severe impact (a much thicker layer) on the pond than it would have in the ocean.
This is not to say that there is absolutely *no*, effect on the environment. There very clearly is at least one significant impact. However, the biological impact is minimal to non-existent in the quantities present should something like this be utilized for an occasional rescue operation like described. Fish oil is not a foreign substance to the ocean, and this effect dissipates rather quickly in a large body of water like the ocean.
@@noahhounshel104What about stuff like algae bloom or some other similar effect with microbes or something; a big enough spill is not enough to disrupt the chemical balance in small region due to excess or reduction in oxygen or other substances due to consumption or excretion by microrganisms that might feast on the oil or have some their functions disrupted by it?
But either way, my original comment still stands, some (not all, but some) natural substances can be hazardous in certain circumstances (or really, pretty much all if you go to extremes like water intoxication in humans, too much oxygen making things more easily ignitable etc).
Your videos are so well done. You totally make 'nerd' look cool. Keep up the good work.
😎
It's usually the breaking of the "smaller" waves that's the most danger. The underlying long period swells that originates hundreds to thousands of km away will still remain. They will not readily break without wind effects in water deeper than half its wavelength and is much easier to deal with when in smaller ships.
There is a fishing technique in greece called "pirofani" where the fishermen drop small rocks with oil in the sea in order to calm it down and see through with strong light during the night,Then they use spear to catch the fish.
ok this is weri cool , I dont know how this chanel keeps comeing up with ideas like this, but respect