Styrofoam cup experiment!

Hello everyone!  Haley here.  We sent down a few styrofoam cups with Jason to about 900 meters below the surface in a mesh bag, and what came back was a styrofoam cup the size of a small Dixie cup. The reasoning behind this?… When styrofoam is STP (standard temperature and pressure) on the surface, it isn’t actually completely solid and has air trapped in between the bits of styrofoam.  The high pressure in water this deep caused the air to be pushed out of the foam and shrunk the cup down to its now miniature size.  This is similar to when you put apple slices into a food dehydrator.  The slices shrink down when the water is evaporated from the fruit just as the cup shrank when the air was pushed out.  Just a little fun experiment we had to try and wanted to share with you all!

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