Exploding Pop Cans

Factual Questions
1

I climbed into my car this morning and noticed a brown goo over the windows, headliner, back of the seat, and several very wet books. Assuming that there were no pigeons in the car that had recently eaten Mexican food, I searched the car and eventually found a can of Pepsi on the floor with the tab pushed out (not in).

Today, the outside temperature was around 25c (77F). Any idea of how hot the interior of a car becomes on a day like today? Does anyone know the temperature at which Pepsi cans are supposed to be able to handle?

Maybe we could help world peace by sending cases of these Pepsi bombs to Suddam Hussein and hope for a heat wave.

Just a thought…

2

When I was in high school, I drove to school one morning, and left my car parked on the street (leaving an unopened can of Coke[sup]TM[/sup] sitting on the dash.

Upon finishing school and returning to my car, I found that the can had swollen to the size of a pregnant watermellon (OK, slight exaggeration, but it was pretty swollen!). I picked it up, and for lack of any better idea put it under my seat…

I started the car, and drove about a block…

POW! Suddenly my ankles were soaked in sticky, warm, brown fluid… Pop indeed!

3

Welcome to the SDMB!

According to this site, which is obviously not authoritative, the pressure at which a can will explode is 40 C or 104 F. I looked around on the web a little and couldn’t come up with anything more convincing than that, but in my opinion if the temperature was only 77 F, the inside of your car shouldn’t have been hot enough to make a soda can explode. Where I live we’re lucky if it ever gets below 77, and it commonly gets above 100, and people’s soda cans aren’t exploding all over the place. I’ve left plenty of beer and soda in my car in the summer and it’s never happened to me. Maybe you had a defective can.

4

  1. Depending on the solar heat flux, the inside of your car can get extremely hot. I personally measured 145 F on one Summer day, when it was about 95 outside. It is fair to assume that in direct sun, a car with black interior could get to 110 F on a 77 F day. But it will depend on many variables.

  2. I have done…experiments with heating pop cans, and the temperature at which they explode varies extremely widely. I have seen them get to about 160 F without exploding before. And seen them explode at about 110 F.

5

Maybe it’s more likely to happen if the can is rolling around under the seat, getting shaken up?

It happened to me on a hot day, POP! KASPLOOSH! the can split wide open. Fortunately it was a can of carbonated mineral water so it didn’t leave a sticky mess.