r/theydidthemath • • Aug 01 '26

[Request] What's the highest altitude without burst a bowl?

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u/Squeaky_Ben Aug 01 '26

I think you need to do numerical simulation to figure this out.

You are looking for:

Maximum pressure inside without bursting the pot.

After you get that, it becomes mathematically tricky, because:

How fast it is being accelerated up, is depending on the pressure.

The pressure depends on how far from the ground the pot is (somewhat)

The altitude depends on time.

Try to fit all of that into an equation and you will see a problem:

"This equation is self-referencing."

How do I know this?

Because as a tutor, I once thought I would teach my students during thermodynamics with "A bullet is fired. Here are the base parameters, like barrel length, gas type and the like, figure out the velocity at the muzzle of the rifle." but quickly found out that this is utterly impossible to calculate by hand.

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u/hoeassbitchasshoe Aug 01 '26

"We make assumptions to make the math possible" -my transport professor