Eli5: How does water not get in your nose when you hold your breath while diving?
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Pressure. Same reason it doesn’t leak out of a syringe or straw. If you’re holding your breath, there’s no way for water to get in. While it seems like the water should easily be able to replace the air, fluid dynamics says that things don’t passively gain pressure. If there’s no force that would cause it to try and displace the air, it can’t.
As a side note: holding your breath doesn’t actually pit your lungs or body under any kind of pressure. The “pressure” feeling from holding your breath is just due to the fact that you have to actively keep your diaphragm flexed to keep air in your lungs. But the actual air is always in an equilibrium, regardless of what phase of breathing you’re in.
The nose is connected to the throat by a passageway called the nasal cavity. When you hold your breath while diving, the air pressure in your lungs is greater than the water pressure outside your body. This keeps the air in your lungs from escaping into your nasal cavity.
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