Thunder stone

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Thunder was puzzled by a stone. This is where the Bronze Horseman stands. In St. Petersburg. I understand that under Catherine the Great no one dragged him from any Lakhta to any St. Petersburg, this is a fairy tale. But the official version of how he was dragged along the water became interesting. I decided to do the calculations. I took numbers and other data from this article.

and from wikipedia

So thunder is a stone.

Quote from wikipedia

Who does not understand what 1500 tons is, then these are 25 railway tanks. A whole train, and not a small one. And all these 25 tanks press pointwise on a very small patch. And, most importantly, unlike a train, this stone has certain rounded shapes, that is, it can easily fall on its side.

What do they tell us about the ship, or rather about the barge on which this pebble was allegedly transported.

Quote

We will talk about the mouth of the Neva later. Just remember that such a figure has been announced.

So, we are given some conditions for a problem with known dimensions. The shape of the barge is unknown to us, but let it be a rectangle, or rather a parallelepiped. And it is easier to count, and the volume is maximum.

What is the thickness of the walls of this parallelepiped? It should not be small, because it must withstand 25 railway tanks, and with a certain point of maximum load. That is, in this place, you need some kind of structure that distributes the pressure of the stone on the plane, or some kind of pillow (for example, sand or gravel), which actually gives additional weight. We are told that the barge was made of wood. Let the walls be 1 meter thick for this size of the barge. All the walls, and the bottom too. I don’t want to deal with sopromatics, the order of the numbers is important to me now. So we have a parallelepiped with the given dimensions and wall thickness of 1 meter. (18m x 5m x 1m) x2 + (55m x 5m x 1m) x2 + 18m x 55m x1m = 1720 cubic meters. This is the volume of the bottom and sides of the barge. How much does it weigh. Here is the wood density plate.

We see that the density is in the range of 0.5-0.6. Let it be 0.5, take the lightest. And it's easier to count. 1720 x 0.5 = 860 tons. This is the weight of the ship's box. We are really told that there was a special "strong deck" inside the barge, but we do not know its shape or size. And therefore, let's forget about it. Well, she was not there, even if she kept on balloons.

Now add the weight of the stone to the 860 tons obtained, that is, 1500 tons. A total of 2360 tons. Now divide the resulting total weight by the area of the barge. 2360: 990 = 2.4 meters. This is the displaced volume of water, in other words, the draft of the vessel to a certain zero buoyancy.

Go ahead. We see that, in general, the weight of the barge is almost two times less than the weight of the stone. Any slightest movement of the stone or its displacement relative to the center of mass will lead to the ship's roll or even capsizing. How to avoid it. Only by balancing the masses. Better yet, increasing the mass of the vessel as much as possible. And for this we will have to make ballast by will, not by will, and along the entire plane of the barge. The further from the center, the greater the leverage effect and the more stable the vessel. Let's not overload the barge, let the total weight of the vessel be equal to a stone. That is, let's add a little bit of sand, and let go of the balloons on which the "strong deck" was attached. That is, let the total weight of the structure be at least 3000 tons. This theoretically makes it possible to carry out some kind of transportation of the stone by a certain vessel over a relatively calm water surface. In this case, the draft of the vessel will be 3000: 990 = let it be 3 meters.

We understand perfectly well that during the transportation of the vessel it will be pumped. For a thousand reasons. Anyone who has ever fished from a boat knows that the boat always rocks. From the wave, from the wind, from the current, etc. Considering the size of the barge, its weight, the weight of the stone in the center of the vessel, it must be assumed that the inevitable rolling of the structure will be in no way less than half a meter in amplitude. Most likely more. Well, let it be half a meter. Let us assume that balloons hang in the corners of the barge and they dampen the oscillatory motion.

What do we have in common. We have a set of facts and figures that give rise to the theoretical possibility of transporting a stone by a barge with conditional initial data on a reservoir with a depth of no less than 3.5 meters. If we assume that the thickness of the walls or the bottom of the barge was greater than that taken for calculations, if we assume that the barge structure had some stiffeners or other structural elements weighting the structure, if we assume that the barge was not strictly rectangular, if some propellers were allowed on the barge (sails, steam engine, …) etc. - then the minimum passable depth of the reservoir will only increase.

Let's now see what the depths are in those places. Remember at the beginning of the article, the quote indicates that at the mouth of the Neva, the depth is only 2.4 meters.

We look at the diagram of how the Thunder stone was transported.

And here is a map of the depths of the Neva Bay. Let's mentally lay the route drawn above along it.

As we can see, the first 800 meters from the shore are less than 2 meters deep, of which the first 600 meters are less than 1 meter deep. Then another about 3, 5 kilometers of depth from 2 to 3 meters. Depths of more than 3 meters begin only from the Petrovsky fairway. It allows the passage of vessels with a draft of up to 4, 2 meters (according to navigation maps). It would be more correct to say that it allows it now, as it was 200-250 years ago, I do not know. I also don’t know if there was even this fairway at that time. If anyone has information, please share. Logic tells me that it was dug along with the main fairway from Kronstadt at the end of the 19th century, otherwise there is no point in it. Around the Petrovsky fairway, the depth is in the region of 2 meters, closer to the mouth of the Malaya Neva, there is an extensive sandbank with a depth of less than 2 meters. In the Malaya Neva itself there are at least 3 sections with depths of less than 4 meters. At the entrance to the Bolshaya Neva, the depth is also no more than 4 meters. Maps by links

And you also need to take into account the fact that the speed of the current in the Neva is about 1 meter per second. How such a colossus was dragged upstream requires a separate analysis. We are told that they were dragged by two sailing ships. Something tells me that this is also impossible.

What are the conclusions. And the conclusions are very simple. A simple analysis of the numbers shows that the transportation of the Thunder Stone on the conditions that are officially presented to us along the route that we are officially shown is impossible. Either the stone weighed less, or the barge was larger, or the sea was deeper, or … Or none of this happened and all this is a beautiful fairy tale. Personally, I am sure of the latter. The thunder stone stood here long before the founding of Peter by Peter I.

And then what? We are told that the stump is a Thunder stone.

Apparently, this is one of the stones of which there are a great many along the shores of the Gulf of Finland. And he has no more relation to the Thunder stone than any other stone.