![]() The steel girders of the Boston Elevated Railway were buckled, knocking a rail-car off the tracks. Homes and buildings were destroyed, smashed from their foundations. In front of the molasses went a blast of air that blew some folks off their porches and tumbled others along the street like rag dolls. The big tank exploded, sending a 25-foot wall of molasses roaring down the hill toward Commercial Street at about 35 miles an hour. ![]() Just after noon, North End families felt the ground shake and heard a sound like a machine gun- the tank’s rivets popping out. The unseasonably warm temperature quickly rose from 2° F (-16.7° C) to 40° F (4.4° C), expanding the liquid, and natural fermentation produced CO2 increasing tank pressure. Local families often collected some of the dripping molasses to sweeten their food. It was poorly built of thin steel painted brown to hide its leaks. The enormous tank holding the molasses was about 50 feet tall and 90 feet in diameter, holding 2,300,000 gallons. ![]() This may have prompted Purity to collect as much molasses as possible. The 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting sales of alcoholic beverages, was due to be passed the very next day. Purity Distilling Company fermented and distilled molasses to make rum and alcohol. The weather was one factor: unusually warm for winter. On January 16, 1919, a cascade of tremendous size was poised above Boston’s North End. ![]() All rights reserved.Most disasters are a cascade: small failures and minor circumstances, one leading to another, blossom into a cataclysm. Mapping the physics of the molasses flood could help experts better understand other catastrophes such as industrial spills or ruptured levees, Sharp said.īut mostly, she and the others hope it will pique students' interest in physics. Once the tank split and the molasses gushed across the Boston waterfront, it cooled rapidly, "complicating attempts to rescue victims," the team said in its report. Two days before the disaster, the tank had been topped off with a fresh shipment of molasses from the balmy Caribbean that hadn't yet cooled to Boston winter temperatures. The team found that molasses thickens dramatically when exposed to cold, and that at the time of the collapse, the stuff in the storage tank likely was considerably warmer than the wintry air outside. Harvard graduate student Jordan Kennedy analyzed the properties of blackstrap molasses and how it flows at different temperatures. ![]() Researchers also studied century-old maps and archived National Weather Service meteorological data. Sharp's team combed through hundreds of pages of historical accounts. It reduced buildings to rubble and damaged an elevated train. It took only moments for the molasses to engulf the area around Commercial Street, a bustling artery. Outrunning it was out of the question: Sharp says the sticky tsunami raced through the cobblestone streets at 35 miles per hour, propelled by the sheer weight of the goop. 15, 1919, shortly after 12:40 p.m., the massive tank in Boston's crowded North End buckled and gave way, releasing more than 2.3 million gallons of molasses in a towering wave that historical accounts indicate was initially 25 feet tall-nearly as high as a football goalpost. "Oddly enough, that's exactly what we're dealing with here, except that this molasses wasn't slow." "I'm originally from Arkansas, where we have an old expression: 'Slow as molasses in January,'" she said. Team leader Nicole Sharp said she hopes the findings-presented last week at a conference of the American Physical Society-will shed new light "on the physics of a fascinating and surreal historical event." Now Harvard University researchers think they know why the wave of sticky stuff claimed so many lives: A winter chill rapidly cooled the molasses as it streamed through the streets, complicating rescuers' frantic efforts to free victims.Ī team of experts who studied the disaster to gain a better understanding of fluid dynamics concluded that cold temperatures quickly thickened the syrupy mess, which might have claimed few if any lives had it occurred in spring, summer or fall. ![]()
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