Blowing My Stack
(AKA “Flippin My Lid”)
Folks, I wanted to share this with you last week, when it actually happened. But this is my first opportunity to post this amazing photographic evidence. I bet you have never seen anything like this before.
Last week, I went out to my trusty rusty TechPaulmobile to head out to someone’s home for an appointment to undo the damage they had done to their computer. I opened my car door and saw I had a serious problem, and would be a little late for my appointment.
A bomb had gone off in my car. A “pepsi bomb”. And sticky little brown droplets were everywhere.
I had placed a full Pepsi in my cupholder earlier in the morning, in preparation for some travel that got canceled. So, no, this can did not vibrate or get shaken. It just got left inside a car for a few hours. A car that got quite warm. On an unusually warm day.
(Contrary to public perception, northern California is not a warm climate. Thus Mark Twain’s famous quote: “The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Fransisco.“) (The California most people think of is actually Southern Cal – Los Angeles/San Diego)
Logic tells me that, if a can were to ‘blow’, because the contents expanded too greatly, that the ‘easy-open’ “pop” tab would give… not the whole top..
Life.
If it isn’t one thing, it’s the other.
(And maybe now I really can say “Now I’ve seen everything!”)
Have a great Wednesday, everyone.
Today’s quote: “The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity.” ~ Robert Anthony
Copyright 2007-2012 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
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Tech - for Everyone 
The strongest part of the paper is the perforation.
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Richard Pedersen,
Contra-logical, but.. seems about right.
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TechPaul,
Murphy’s Law — “It is found that anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later’
We had a liter bottle of coke one time in the back of the car, that rolled and hit something that caused a pinhole to develop. Needless to say it was like a sprinkler system going off while driving 65 mph on the interstate… After that experience of had nightmares of drinking a coke and my belly button popping : )
I think maybe they need to put an explosion warning on these sodas…
Rick
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Rick,
It’s amazing the force at which carbonated drinks can come out of a pinhole, and when it’s a 2-liter? Yikes.
(See, that same thing happened to me, but fortunately I was able to have a backseat passenger throw their jacket over it fairly quickly.. And I wasn’t doing 65. Scary!)
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A Pepsi Bomb!
Stranger Than Fiction! Not only Messy…but Funny too.
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Gaia,
I hate to confess this but, my immediate reaction was not laughter.
I am afraid I cussed a wee little bit. (Eensty-teensy little bit..)
But I am keeping the can as a souvenir and conversation piece.. and, yes, I can laugh about it now.
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Perhaps you should share the pic with Pepsi Corp. This could be a very serious problem under the right circumstance.
I would be interested in knowing what the outdoor temp at the time. It would seem that the tab would be the one to allow the accumulated gas to escape rather than separating the lid from the body of the can. As for your uncommon language escaping at the time, it prevented your lid from separating from your body as the unfortunate Pepsi can did.
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Ann,
By the time I came back out and discovered the “scene”.. was just before noon, on a day that reached a very warm for our area high of 98° (by late afternoon). The can received direct sun the whole while (approx 3 hours) and the windows were rolled up.
… I really can see no reason why the can should have done that .. as, the car’s interior was not can’t-touch-the-steering-wheel hot.. like it gets in TusconMatt’s part of the world.
And thank you for the belly laugh. Yes.. I did “blow off some steam” my own self.
(I blame shock.)
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[…] Blowing My Stack – (AKA “Flippin My Lid”) […]
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Can only imagine what would have happened with that here in Tucson when it was 112 last week!!! This is why I drink Coke! :D
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TucsonMatt,
I am afraid you have evoked some memories. I have been in Tucson when it was at least that hot, more than once. (But it’s a dry heat..)
The Desert Museum is still my fave “zoo”, as it made such an impression on me when I first visited.. way back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
Thank you. I had almost forgotten…
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I’ve seen this phenomena in Central Florida with covered containers that have no liquid inside. I drink my morning smoothie, put the lid on the plastic container and when I return to the truck at the end of the day, the lid has blown off.
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Kay,
Yes. Gas expands when warmed. If the container is not strong enough to contain the increased pressure… POP!
This is the first time in my many decades of life I have seen a soda can POP! simply due to the sun.. but, as they say, there’s a “first time” for everything.
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For sure, Tech Paul, seeing the pic of the entire top of the can blown off was amazing. I’m sure the mess was too. ugh.
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Kay,
Yes, ugh!
But I have found that sometimes, like it or not, one just has to roll up their sleeves, and get to it. (Would have been nice if soda could just .. evaporate away..)
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Amazing! Curious your title, since I am from a group once referred to as Flips back in the 50s, and your closing comment a few moments ago is still sinking in … I agree, send this to Pepsi. As for messy, I do recall a Toyota of mine that got trashed with a coke can that erupted while my then teenage daughters were joy riding with friends. The droplets remained on my car ceiling for quite a while, since I waited for the girls to clean it up. Well, ya defied the odds.
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Teresita B,
So you know.
“Trashed” does kinda describe it…
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Couldn’t have anything to do with the thinning of cans, plastic grocery bags, etc ? It takes 4 bags to hold 2 2Liter bottles of soda..
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Sir or Ms,
In a bankrupt society, “cost saving” does – indeed – become a top priority, and many, many methods of “belt tightening” employed. So I will not say that cans and bags (etc.) are not “thinner” than they once were. But I will say that in this particular instance – looking at where the “fail” happened – that the way in which the can’s top was attached to the (1-piece) “body” was the culprit. (so.. weaker glue?)
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Being from Florida, I always had a light colored car with some kinda cream/light interior. It didn’t get as hot…so they said.
I still cleaned off Coke(even in a convertible) at least 3 times so I know how it feels. But my can was different..the break was jagged.
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delenn13,
Three times?
Ew.
It doesn’t show too clearly in the pic, but the very top edge of the can “body” is a bit jagged.
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