What is Boyle's law in regards to scuba diving?

Answer 1

Boyle's Law: (P1 X V1)/T1 = (P2 X V2)/T2 applies to Scuba diving since there is a significant change in the pressure. As the pressure of the surounding water increases with depth, you are required to use far more air from the SCUBA tank to provide for your breathing. If you use one cubic foot of air at sea-level, doubling the atmosphereic pressure as you go down causes you to use your compressed air at twice the rate. By the time you get very deep you are using your air at a very high rate.

Answer 2

Boyle's law says that the farther down you go in scuba diving, you need to put in less air in order to get the same buoyant effects. However, as you go up, you need to take air out of your suit. Gay-Lussac's law says that your blood can become saturated with inert gases, causing the Bends. Other laws say that you can burst a lung by holding your breath as you go up.

Answer 3

Boyle's law staes that for a fixed amount of an ideal gas kept at a fixed temperature, pressure and volume are inversely proportional (while one increases, the other decreases).

Basically as a diver, the deeper you go, the greater the water pressure around you (1atm per 10m in salt water), so the volume of air that you breath reduces. To equalize your lungs, so that you take a lungful of air, you need to breath more.

Eg - at 10m, you are under twice as much pressure than at surface (2atm as opposed to 1atm), so volume of air you are beathing is half. You'd get short of breath breathing half as much, so you breathe twice as much (you don't notice this).

Because of this, your air supply will last less the deeper you are.

Answer 4

In filling a scuba tank, you want to ideally fill at a rate of 200psi per min (dry) and 400psi per min (wet).

The faster the gas molecules move, the more heat is generated. Fill the tank fast to 3000psi and it will be hot, when it cools it may only have 2600psi.

Answer 5

The greater the partial pressure of the gas, the greater the driving force for solution and the greater the amount of gas that will dissolve into solution. As the temperature decreases, More gas will dissolve into solution. It is

very important to realisethat Henry's law

is Concerned with the amount of gas in

Solution when equilibrium is reached.

It specifically does not address how

Rapidly that state is reached!

The dissolution of nitrogen within body the

Tissues are approximated by Henry's

Law.

Answer 6

Boyle's say's "Pressure acts inversely to volume." Basically, Pressure increases and volume decreases, as well as visa versa. So as you go deeper in the water column the volume (size) of the air bubble going through your blood vessels is decreased. However when breathing at depth this is counteracted because of the diver breathing (Simple version: Take a tennis ball down 30 or 40 ft. and the ball becomes flat i.e. the ball is your lungs. Then you fill the ball up with air at depth and it will go back to it's original size.) The amount of air required to keep your lungs full increases the deeper you go and that is way your tanks get used up faster when you go deeper.

Now is the trick and possible fatal part of diving; coming back to the surface. "pressure acts inversely to volume" so after breathing air at depth, the volume of air in your lungs is equivalent to the surface. So as you come back to the surface the pressure will decrease and the volume of the air bubbles (size) will increase. This may cause a blockage in the blood vessels, joints, muscles, bones or the brain. This is called decompression sickness (DCS). There are two types of DCS: Type 1 is any Pain, Itching, Swelling or Skin rash (P.I.S.S.). Type 2 is any of those symptoms in the trunk area of the body (waist to the chest) or more importantly any neurological symptom. The only way to counteract this effect is to come up in the water column slowly (please consult a trained instructor for the proper ascention rate.).

Gregory L.

Las Vegas, NV (D.I.T.)