Can you sink by blowing up your BC below 40m?

[kotik]

Depends on whether you're freediving or if you're on scuba

Ok, got me there. Until you inhale again then, I guess the lungs are indeed smaller

 

[Bottom Surveyor]

I dive in feet instead of meters so I won't have this problem.

Then you' ve got nothing to worry about. Feet are rather shallow (usually two or three inches), so you're safe.

Me, I dive in water! So I have to be careful, as the dreaded "negative bubbles" phenomenon occurs below 40 metres (or 130', if measured in feet)!

 

[dmaziuk]

Careful, you can drown in 2 inches of water.

In 2 inches of feet -- not so much.

 

[Chris12day]

Remember about steam, some steam is wet and some steam is dry! Think about it..... How about 100 percent dry steam? Temperature!

Two sky divers both jump out of an airplane at the same time. One diver opens his chute. It appears that sky diver who opened his chute goes up. Not true at all. He only continues falling at a slower rate.

If you fill your BC at 40 meters, you will shoot to the surface, assuming you are not extremely over-weighted or have a BC that is way too small for lifting you.

 

[Bert van den Berg]

I'm very thankful to have stumbled across this thread. Been diving for 49 years and never realized how dangerous it is to dive deeper than 40M! No wonder PADI tells divers that 40M is the limit for recreational divers.

Tech divers obviously get away with diving deeper than 40M because they usually use a mix that includes very light helium with superior bouyancy properties.

 

[Blasto]

Negative bubbles are common to all gases. It's just that with helium, being that much lighter, their effect is greatly reduced.

Which is why you see the real cool guys use hydreliox all till the final progression to sarinox.

 

[txgoose]

Cooled down steam is water. What is known as "cold steam", and basically visible steam, is water mist. Real steam just expands and condenses quickly. About the only way to keep it in a bucket is to weight it down with negative bubbles.

I realize that I am late to the conversation, but are you actually claiming to have woven/knitted negative bubbles together? And the resulting shawl can be used to hold steam in a bucket? Without running them through some sort of a polarity comb, I don't see how you can even organize then well enough to feed them into a loom.