Is It Really Impossible To Breathe Through a Tube Underwater?

if you've ever been snorkeling before you know what it feels like to breathe through a tube slightly under the water you can see cool things like I found these Dolphins here but what's the limit to how deep you can go under the water breathing through a tube today we're going to check it out at just a depth of 10 feet I physically couldn't take a breath no matter how hard I tried it felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest I couldn't get the slightest bit of air into my lungs to make sure I went some weak breather I had my friend try it as well [Music] still nothing and what's worse is that right when you jump in if your Airway is open the air gets sucked out of your lungs so you don't even have a breath of air to rely on under the water your lungs just get flattened like a pancake we know that you cannot read underwater 10 feet no chance so I'm going to go to the depth where I feel like I can take a breath foreign we found our limit to be around three to four feet of water depth before we couldn't take a breath at all [Music] the reason we can't take a breath is because at around 10 feet of water depth there's around 433 pounds per square inch of pressure pushing on your body you can see the pressure just crushed the air in this bottle here so you physically can't inhale because you'd be pushing against thousands of pounds of force with your chest so when you hold your breath and go under the water and dive that deep that's actually what's happening to the air inside of your lungs as well it becomes compressed air because it's compressed air it's easy to Exhale under the water you can let out bubbles but what if you're not under the water and try to blow air bubbles into the water so now we're just going to try to blow air the whole way down and see when I can't even blow air out of my mouth anymore your muscles that blow out air are actually stronger than your muscles that suck in air but still you can't even overcome the pressure of the water to blow the air out at that depth but what about those vintage deep sea divers that you've seen in movies they have an airline that's supplied through a hose that goes to the surface how do they take a breath well there's a key component to surface supplied air it has to be pressurized so the compressed air can overcome the pressure of the water and you can take a breath so let's see if we can go a little bit deeper if we Supply compressed air we're going to hook to the end of the hose Spencer's gonna be the guinea pig at the bottom trying to braid through it with the compressor so now we're compressing the air to give it a little more pressure behind it and see if you can actually breathe yeah okay I head down and see this is just a warning to not ever try this compressing air pushing it down through a tube and then breathing it at the bottom of a pool we used a pretty weak compressor but here's the danger you take a breath of that compressed air under the water and then if you hold your breath and surface with that air now the air inside of your lungs expands and so you can really injure yourself when that air tries to expand inside of your lungs if you don't let the air out as you go it's the same thing that divers have to do if they have breaths of air you can't just keep that air in your lungs as you surface yeah I mean could you breathe hard it's like little breasts like that and before we end I'd like to thank the sponsor for this video Nautilus Nautilus explores Big Ideas in science its stories present ideas that will be debated long into the future and as a result has established itself as the foremost literary Science magazine the most well-regarded scientific Minds in the world read and write for Nautilus as well as literary giants like the late Cormac McCarthy who published the first non-scientific piece of his career in Nautilus you can join as a digital only member or print to receive six beautifully Illustrated award-winning collectible editions that are a staple of 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Channel: The Action Lab

Views: 2,481,396

Keywords: scuba diving, Breathe underwater, the action lab, tube breathing underwater

Id: PffSc5ZBXgc

Length: 5min 54sec (354 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2023