Why do styrofoam cups shrink under pressure?

[nicevers]

And to mess with you a little more,

The ocean is very very heavy,
And so are clouds.

[enraikow]

Dang, makes you wonder how the fish gets up in the morning every day.
All that pressure could break a man.

[LanIsOriginal]

This also sometimes happens to the vessels themselves, not that I could name any specific instances of course

[sketchers]

"Styrofoam is a foam". Thank you, Hank Green. I had no idea. Truly the information I needed to see.

[Cloodden]

Someone tested that with carbon-fibre and Titanium. Didn't go well. It popped.

[Pindolene]

The way you said "they get squeezed!" made me so happy

[SquidMants]

This has got to be the most expensive way to do shrinky dinks

[ursamajo.r]

Oh I never actually realised where the pressure underwater comes from, that makes so much sense lol ty Hank

[jennifers]

That shrunken foam head was an image that is now burned in my brain…

[silvanussyl]

Thank you for the captions on most of your videos. I'm HOH and so many things aren't accessible to me. They really help.

[PopeLando]

Clicked on what looked like a random science-y short, pleasant surprise, it's Hank Green! 😊 The weird thing about the cups is that, sure, the air is squeezed out of the styrofoam, but instead of making an amorphous plastic blob, the cup retains its shape and literally just "gets smaller" like the ship in Fantastic Voyage.

[catherinebaldwin]

IDKW but his “squished” is the best part of the whole short.

[auntlynnie]

Fun fact: I brought a tub of marshmallow Fluff (the white plastic tub with the red plastic lid) from New York to Wyoming because in Wyoming, I could only find smalls jars of Kraft marshmallow crème, which isn’t the same. When I opened it, it popped open — the plastic seal (under the red lid) couldn’t contain the increased volume of fluff!

[Colonel_dinggus]

What I think is cool is that it’s not just heavy, it’s heavy in all directions so it’s a very even compression

[xtrcity]

It's very common thing in the military, crewman on subs will attach them to submarines and take them as momento. But I also didn't know people had no idea water was heavy and it doesn't just lose its weight because your floating in it.

[leaffinite]

When i was a kid my whole class got to decorate cups that got squished. I was told they took em into a submarine but nowvthat im not 7 im a bit skeptical

[patrikjansson]

I wish I could give your videos 1 million likes. I love your work and wish you all the best, along with a speedy recovery. The universe would be a poorer place without you.

[SaintPhoenixx]

A coffee shop should use different pressures as the names for their sizes.

[rhyla]

Oh!!! I have one of these cups!!!! I was with my early grade school, don't entirely remember, but one of the school's teachers relatives worked with a company that visited the seafloor. They strapped a basket on the outside of something so we each got a styrofoam cup to draw and doodle on the gave them to the teacher. We got them back like a month later, gad them handed back and we knew they were ours because of how we drew on them! That was gow we started to learn about depth pressure and atmospheric pressure! I've kept my styrofoam cup turned undersized shot glass on my Shelf of Interesting Things™ for years!! I really feel Everyone should have such a shelf.

I find how the texture changed fascinating, all rough and dimply.

[sachikofox]

My 5th grade teacher was in the navy and while he was on a submarine, he and the other crew mates would attach styrofoam cups to this machine that would go out into the ocean for maybe 2-3 hours and when it returned, the cups would be smaller due to the pressure. He used that story when teaching the class about pressure in science class, and he even had one of the cups that he used to show us!