120 Years in 120 Objects
Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!
Today’s Object is from 2023
Squashed Styrofoam cup by Igor Muratov, Curator of Mollusca
That is what happens to a Styrofoam cup if you submerge it 4000 metres below the surface of the Indian Ocean. The pressure at that depth is, approximately, 400 bar, or ~ 408 kilograms per square centimetre. All the air was squeezed out of the “foam” [by water pressure and not by a Dumbo Octopus (Grimpoteuthis) that lives at that depth] and the cup shrunk to approximately 40% of its original size. This cup journeyed to the bottom of the Ocean during a research trip aboard the S.A. Agulhas II in 2023. For reference, the Titanic sank at a depth of 3840 metres in 1912.
Animals that live at that depth do not “shrink” like that because their internal pressure equals the water pressure. However, if an animal that normally lives at that depth would surface rapidly, gases that are dissolved in its blood will bubble out the same way as when we open a bottle of Champagne.
