As I hopped in my car I heard a hiss. I looked around to see where the noise was coming from and saw my can of convicted melon Liquid Death sparkling water with its bottom bulging out. Much like a gravid black widow. Horrific! I panicked and quickly tossed the can outside my car.
Like an idiot, I left an unopened can of sparkling water on the passenger side’s floor yesterday. So it has been rolling around, shaken up. And it is already hot as balls outside, so being in an overheated car didn’t help anything.
This thing will likely explode. I don’t want fiddle with it, I don’t want to get hurt. Yet, I don’t want to take off from the parking lot and leave that can unattended. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt. Should I call 911 and let a first responder handle it?
It will pop a seal and the pressure will be released harmlessly. It won’t explode like a grenade.
Many here have seen the movie “Jaws” where the scuba tank is shot and explodes but that doesn’t happen. If you shoot a scuba tank (with much, much higher pressure than a soda can) the air just hisses out. Makes a helluva racket and it gets very cold but that’s about it. The dangerous part would be the tank flying around and hitting things (not really an issue with a soda can).
I once had an entire twelve pack of Diet 7 Up explode from heat in my car. Other than the mess, nothing was dangerous. Same with your situation here. If it wasn’t already venting it would find the weakest point in the construction and blow there.
I’ve seen safety reports of things like a 2000 psi nitrogen cylinder that broke at the valve and went like a rocket, embedding into walls and ceilings. Those things can by extremely dangerous. A soda can at like 17 psi, not so much.
Growing up, my family had a basement refrigerator. I once found an ancient carton of milk, severely bulging. That right there was a hazmat disaster in the making.
I gently lifted the carton, and brought it across the street to leave it in the woods.
I’m with @DavidNRockies , gently remove it from the car, set it up on a fence post, get out your Red Ryder 200 shot Range model air rifle, and take care of business.
Are you sure there is not a snake concealed in the can waiting to spring out and bite the person that opens the can? THAT is what I’d be worried about.
I remember when that was playing and Jacque Cousteau was asked about the air tank sequence and his response was the shark would stand on its tail and backward surf until the air was gone. I’d’ve paid money to see that.
This is in part due to standards for pressure vessels with “leak before burst” requirements and careful design to meet those standards. It’s easier to make something that does burst.
Sit it on the grass.
Walk away. Go about your day.
It’ll be fine.
Saying all that, I’ve seen spectacular things happen to full(sealed) cans and bottles cleaned out of cars around here and put in the burn barrel w/o thinking, unknown to the firestarter.
I lived on the island of Guam for a couple of years. They would get soda imported and it would sit on pallets outside for hours, getting hot, before going into a grocery store. If you were unlucky, you’d buy sodas that were still warm. (And if you’re wondering if it affected the taste, yes it did, very much; when I returned to the contiguous US and first tried a soda I had thought it was the best drink I ever had after two years of Guam soda.)
Sometimes the store even stored them outside because they didn’t have room inside.
Once we had just received a case of soda from the store. It must have been new or one of the places that kept the soda outside because it was still warm. I was putting the cans into my fridge to cool them down and dropped one. It exploded, spraying soda EVERYWHERE. I mean it got onto the ceiling, I am not exaggerating. It was like something out of a bad comedy film (except I wasn’t laughing).
But it was just a spray of soda. There was no shrapnel and there wasn’t enough force for the soda to do anything but get things wet and sticky. It was about as dangerous as a water balloon.
When I was in grad school my wife worked as head of quality control for a vegetable cannery. Cans of beans that went through the retort banks to be cooked were stored in warehouse for I think a few weeks before being shipped. The reason for this became obvious when a whole load of cans exploded. It turned out that the cans were to be cooked during a shift change, and the old shift thought the new shift would do it and the new shift thought the old shift had cooked them. So the bacteria inside the cans grew and grew, generating gas, until they exploded.
Lots of beans on the floor, but no shrapnel.
As for the OP, I’d advise against shooting the can, since you might miss and get a really pissed off can of soda. Throwing it real hard against a convenient tree should do the job.
Similar experience, but with a 190-proof bottle of Everclear.
I had bought a bottle in Tahoe and on my way home I spent the day at the California State Fair in Sacramento. I think it was in the high 90s that day. When I got back to my car and opened the door I was practically knocked over by an invisible cloud of alcoholic vapor. Luckily the bottle was in a paper bag that contained the shards of broken glass.
