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    AIR DIVING-WPS Office

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    armanpangilinanmagbago
    Scuba diving involves complex physics principles related to pressure. Divers carry pressurized air tanks that hold compressed air at around 3,000 psi when full. Deeper dives mean greater water pressure due to increasing numbers of water molecules pushing down, with pressure increasing about 1 bar or 14.5 psi for every 10 meters of depth. Understanding pressure allows divers to safely manage air supply and avoid health issues from changes in pressure.

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    AIR DIVING-WPS Office

    Uploaded by

    armanpangilinanmagbago
    12 views3 pages
    Scuba diving involves complex physics principles related to pressure. Divers carry pressurized air tanks that hold compressed air at around 3,000 psi when full. Deeper dives mean greater water pressure due to increasing numbers of water molecules pushing down, with pressure increasing about 1 bar or 14.5 psi for every 10 meters of depth. Understanding pressure allows divers to safely manage air supply and avoid health issues from changes in pressure.

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    Free aur diving

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    Scuba diving involves complex physics principles related to pressure. Divers carry pressurized air tanks that hold compressed air at around 3,000 psi when full. Deeper dives mean greater water pressure due to increasing numbers of water molecules pushing down, with pressure increasing about 1 bar or 14.5 psi for every 10 meters of depth. Understanding pressure allows divers to safely manage air supply and avoid health issues from changes in pressure.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    12 views3 pages

    AIR DIVING-WPS Office

    Uploaded by

    armanpangilinanmagbago
    Scuba diving involves complex physics principles related to pressure. Divers carry pressurized air tanks that hold compressed air at around 3,000 psi when full. Deeper dives mean greater water pressure due to increasing numbers of water molecules pushing down, with pressure increasing about 1 bar or 14.5 psi for every 10 meters of depth. Understanding pressure allows divers to safely manage air supply and avoid health issues from changes in pressure.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    RHETT ALLAINSCIENCENOV 26, 2022 7:00 AM

    The Physics of Scuba Diving

    A deep dive into the science of staying alive underwater.


    overhead view of scuba divers swimming in blue ocean water

    PHOTOGRAPH: LEWIS MULATERO/GETTY IMAGES

    SAVE

    I USED TO scuba dive way more than I should. I pretty much did everything: open-water dives, technical
    dives, spearfishing, and cave diving. It's a fun sport that allows you to see some incredible things, but
    there’s also tons of science that goes into the process of safely putting a human underwater. So let’s
    discover what scuba diving can teach us about physics.

    Pressure

    Perhaps the first thing a scuba diver thinks of when dealing with pressure is tank pressure. Scuba tanks
    contain a lot of air in a relatively small volume, and the only way to do this is to compress the air,
    producing high pressure. A diver can determine the amount of air left in a tank by using a pressure
    gauge. Usually, a full tank has a pressure of 3,000 pounds per square inch (psi). If you get below 200 psi,
    you should be out of the water.

    Normal air—the stuff that blankets the Earth—is mostly nitrogen molecules, which make up about 79
    percent of it. The rest is oxygen, at around 21 percent. We can imagine that these molecules are like
    super-tiny balls moving at different speeds and in different directions. If this gas was in a container,
    some of the molecules would collide with the wall, bounce off of it, and change direction. This change in
    motion means that each molecule exerts a small force on the wall. (A bigger wall or container will
    experience more collisions and a greater overall force.)

    FEATURED VIDEO

    One way we describe the motion of gas molecules is to think about the force per unit area. This is the
    pressure of the gas:
    Pressure formula P = FA

    ILLUSTRATION: RHETT ALLAIN

    If you measure the force in pounds and the area in square inches, you get pressure in pounds per square
    inch, or psi. That's the most common unit for tank pressure in the United States.

    Another unit is the bar, where 1 bar is equal to 14.5 psi. The value of 1 bar is very close to the pressure
    of air on Earth. The atmospheric pressure of the air that surrounds you right now is probably 14.5 psi.
    (Yes, I said "probably" because I don't want to judge you. Maybe you are reading this from the top of
    Mount Everest, where the pressure is just 4.9 psi, because there is less air above you pushing down. If
    so, send me a picture.) In terms of force and area, it is equal to 100,000 newtons per square meter.

    Water is also made of tiny moving molecules that act like balls, and those molecules collide with
    underwater objects (like people), producing pressure. Water has many more molecules than the same
    volume of air, which means there are more collisions to produce a greater pressure. But just like going
    to the top of Mount Everest decreases the air pressure, going deeper in water increases the pressure,
    because gravity pulls downward on the molecules of water. For every 10 meters of depth, the pressure
    increases by 1 bar, or 14.5 psi. That means that on a dive 20 meters (around 60 feet) below sea level,
    there would be a water pressure of 43.5 psi, three times greater than the air pressure at Earth’s surface.

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