Hot Steel Suicide
My first real job after school was as an apprentice in a steel factory in South Africa. The process could be roughly divided in to four parts: smelting of iron in blast furnaces, conversion to steel in the steel mill (basic oxygen process), casting in to rough shape, and finally forging or rolling in to the final shape. The iron was transported to the steel mill in huge open pots which crusted over in transit, but the product of the steel mill was pure molten steel, moved around by crane in open pots which didn't crust over. Sometimes large drops of molten steel would fall in to puddles of rainwater (the roof leaked), and it went off like a bomb, shaking the whole building.

You can probably guess where this is going: the story I was told was about a worker who committed suicide by jumping, from a significant height, in to an open pot of molten steel. One counter-intuitive point to note is that molten steel is still steel, nearly 7x as dense as water: the result being that (even at high impact velocity) packages of meat and water don't go "splash", or even "splot", they just go "thud" and float on top.

I don't believe anyone stopped to check whether he survived the actual fall, given that he was soon melting / burning / disintegrating at temperatures exceeding 1500°C. The worst part? That whole vat of steel was contaminated and had to be recycled, costing thousands of Rand.
(Tsukemono, Sat 7 Sep 2013, 19:38, 14 replies)

Yeah but that was only like 7p or something.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Sat 7 Sep 2013, 19:54, closed)

That's Alien3 ruined then.
Thanks a lot.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Sat 7 Sep 2013, 21:15, closed)

You're safe.
Alien 3 was in a leadworks, there's about a 1000°C difference.
(squigbobble existed, Mon 9 Sep 2013, 9:49, closed)

Nice metallurgical pedantry,
but would a human body sink into molten lead, or float atop and sizzle?
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Mon 9 Sep 2013, 16:32, closed)

Molten lead is about 50% denser than molten iron assuming they're both around their melting point.
If you fall into something the force is typically several times your weight so you can still penetrate the surface even if the fluid is more dense than the object. How it reacts depends largely on the viscosity which again depends on the temperature in molten metals.

Also ... Alien3 is shit.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Mon 9 Sep 2013, 18:08, closed)

With all the corpse-fondlers and heavy industry workers that this /qotw has produced,
I'd have thought we could rustle up some conclusive proof, rather than just conjecture. Oh well.

Alien3 is easily my favourite Alien film.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Tue 10 Sep 2013, 13:12, closed)

Your last sentence guarantees
that you fully deserve everything that comes your way.
(s0ckpuppet logging out to reply to you if you're not careful, Tue 10 Sep 2013, 13:38, closed)

AvP?
No one deserved that.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Tue 10 Sep 2013, 16:09, closed)

AvP2
Was like a frigging 50s B-movie.
(squigbobble existed, Wed 11 Sep 2013, 11:01, closed)

I reckon I might have enjoyed that, if I could be bothered to watch it.
Sitting through Predators was a dreadful mistake, though.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 11 Sep 2013, 11:15, closed)

It starts off ok...
...but gets more and more OTT as it progresses.
(squigbobble existed, Wed 11 Sep 2013, 11:38, closed)

Fuck.
The density thing would never have crossed my mind. That's fucking horrible.

*click*, obviously.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Sun 8 Sep 2013, 17:21, closed)

indeed. Iron cannonball dropped in a bath of Mercury.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm5D47nG9k4
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Sun 8 Sep 2013, 22:10, closed)

We should definitely consider burning that guy.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Sun 8 Sep 2013, 23:09, closed)