Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: eskimo2 on January 20, 2007, 01:37:31 PM
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OK: Imagine a geyser/fountain that is on a very tall elevator and there is a scuba diver in the geyser. The geyser squirts water up at the same speed that the diver swims down, except all of this is happening on a huge elevator that descends a few hundred feet into a mine over a time of, say 40 minutes.
The question is:
If when the elevator gets to the bottom the geyser is turned off, will the diver get the bends?
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As Mom used to say, Everything will be all right. Just take a couple aspirin and head for bed and you'll feel better tomorrow.
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I willl attempt to answer by saying a geyser may most likely par boil said diver anyways.
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It's not the descent but the rapid pressure change that comes with altitude. So I'd say yes.
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He will not get the bends because the bends are caused by gas bubbles that form when the pressure is reduced, not increased. Since the elevator is descending, the air pressure is increasing so the gas bubbles will not form. The water pressure on the diver will not increase as the elevator descends because the water is not contained.
The exception to this would be if the geyser were of an arbitrarily large width/diameter so that the water column was effectively contained at the center where the diver was, with a resulting increase of water pressure due to the water column above the diver. This would be essentially the same situation as a diver swimming down the center a massive swimming pool that has had it's containment walls removed. There would be a period of time where there would still be high water pressure at the center of the pool even though the water column was not contained. Even then, the diver would only suffer "the bends" if he were to exit the geyser at the bottom of the elevator shaft and the elevator trip duration was of sufficient length at a high enough pressure to cause his blood to become oversaturated with gasses.
Another way to look at this is to imagine a 100 ft tall tank with a door at the bottom. If the diver swims down to the bottom of the tank and then exits the door, could he get the bends? The answer to that is obvious because the water pressure at the bottom of the tank is sufficient to cause the oversaturation of nitrogen in the blood that leads to the bends once the pressure is no longer present.
In fact, the entire original question is this: Is the water pressure at the bottom of an uncontained column of water greater at the bottom than it is at the top? I do not believe that an uncontained water column small enough to fit inside an elevator would have enough of an increase in pressure to result in the bends for a person exiting that water column.
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The arenas getting kinda boring lately? ;)
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He will not get the bends because the bends are caused by gas bubbles that form when the pressure is reduced, not increased. Since the elevator is descending, the air pressure is increasing so the gas bubbles will not form. The water pressure on the diver will not increase as the elevator descends because the water is not contained.
I'd personally say that he would get the bends. The Geyser needs to have pressure to be able to work. If the diver is swimming in the water, he'd be in a higher pressure environment. If he suddenly comes out, he'll be in a lower pressure environment.
But that's just a guess.
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It depends, does the diver have name that starts with "J"?
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I like Eagls example better. Is there any evidence that a geyser is a continous column of water?
So lets say that a diver enters the submariners pool that the U.S. Navy uses. He starts at the top, dives down 100 feet, and exits the pool. Will he get the bends? Not likely, he hasn't been submerged long enough. BUT, lets not forget about lung over expansion injuries. At 100, the diver has 3 times the volume of air in his lungs than he would have at the surface. A sudden pressure change could rupture his lungs. If the diver went from 4 atmospheres of pressure (every 33 feet in water is an entire atmosphere of pressure + the real atmosphere) back to one atmosphere without expelling the gas from his lungs, he would probably die.
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Originally posted by eagl
He will not get the bends because the bends are caused by gas bubbles that form when the pressure is reduced, not increased. Since the elevator is descending, the air pressure is increasing so the gas bubbles will not form. The water pressure on the diver will not increase as the elevator descends because the water is not contained.
It's in a shaft, the water is contained. The pressure at the bottom of the shaft would be the equivelant of going down 100 feet below water level. Maybe even a little higher because of the sidewall resistance of the shaft causing resistance that might promote more pressure at the bottom plus some additional pressure that cold be measured by seeing how high the water was shooting out of the top of the top of the shaft.
It's a bit of a silly scenario, but the water pressure will always be present
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Man, I parody the airplane conveyor thread with the most ridiculous comparison I could think of and everyone takes it seriously…
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But if he farts the body pressure should equalize right?
:huh
Mac
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As long as there isnt a stingray hiding in there
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Any snakes on the elevator? What about the plane?
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I say the diver gets killed by a sting ray.