I understand that breathable air behaves differently underwater due to higher ambient pressure, and that for some reason it causes bubbles in your blood vessels if you ascend too quickly. But I couldn’t understand why that is.
Additionally, given the same supply of air tank, why is it the case that if you are living in a underwater habitat, then you can dive for longer hours as opposed to someone who came down from the surface?
In: Biology
Think of a can of Pringles. If you take it up to a mountain top too quickly, the cap pops open because the pressure from when it was filled with air at sea level is much higher than the air pressure at the mountain top. This is because air sits on air, so it’s thickest and heaviest at the lowest altitudes.
When you go diving, the same thing happens. The water pressure is much higher when you go lower, so the air that goes into your lungs is at a much higher pressure than your lungs would normally be at in order to expand to their regular size for taking a breath.
So it’s not the high pressures that hurt your lungs (to a point) but the changes in pressure while you have air in your lungs. You don’t want to ascend or descend too quickly and have your lungs explode/collapse as a result, like the can of Pringles on the mountain top.
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