BEER CAN EXPERIMENT- OVERTHRUSTING

Originally proposed by Hubbert M K and Rubey W, this simple experiment shows that while a normal beer can at room temperature can be slided over glass by tilting by 27 degrees, the can can slide at a slope angle of only one degree if it is chilled in the freezer first since the weight of the can is balanced by the pressure required to heat up the air inside the can. Based on the simple experiment, Hubbert and Rubey advocated that large thrusts can be initiated over negligibly dipping slopes if there was a good deal of pore water present in the sediments which counteracted the weight of the thrust sheet. The normal stress gets reduced considerably, and the shear stress becomes in excess of the normal stress times the coefficient of internal friction.