Eli5: cave diving. Why do you need different gas mixtures at different depths?
In: 3
There are a lot of factors here, from minimizing time without decompression to minimizing decompression time, allowing for greater depth, allowing for longer dive times and so on. ELI5 though, keeping it simple, these mixes are about maximizing what people care about, which for recreational divers is often the time they stay at shallow depths without needing to get into a decompression chamber, to avoid the bends. In commercial diving the concerns are often about operating safely at depth (past a certain point you can’t safely raise the percentage of Oxygen with Nitrogen alone as the diluent gas, so Helium is often added), about minimizing the time spent in decompression (which can be many hours a day). In extreme cases such as saturation divers the goal is simply to minimize any risk at great depths without needing frequent decompression.
Latest Answers