eli5: Why do we sink when drowning and float when we die?
In: Biology
Well it depends how much fat you have, what you are wearing, and whether you have air in your diaphragm. If I hold my breath in, I float. But if I breathe it all out, I sink. So if breathed out my air and didn’t know how to swim, I would be sinking and thus not able to refill with air to gain more buoyancy. But my wife (not fat, but a woman and so proportionally more fat than I am) can float with or without holding in a breath.
As other’s have said, when you are dead, other gasses can cause buoyancy.
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