cogitoergo
Guest
I'm new to scuba diving. One of the first teachings that went against my intuition and physics background was the increased air consumption as depth, and breathed air pressure, increase. There is a lot of material out there that relates this phenomenon to the fact that a breathful of air at 2 atm - for instance - will in fact contain 2 breathfuls of surface air. At that rate, the tank will deplete twice as fast. What I don't get is that in that same breathful of 2 atm air, there is also twice as much oxygen. And if there is more oxygen, we should be able to take fewer breaths. After all, the amount of O2 in the tank is the same at any depth. Why is that same amount of O2 not allowing me to produce the same work at 2 atm as it would at 1? One final note: If I go to a Colorado ski resort, where the atmospheric pressure is far less than 1 atm, I will take many more breaths of the same volume as I would at sea level for the same work output. Why isn't the reverse also true when I go diving at depth? Are we so limited in the rate of oxygen we can process? Are we breathing out - and wasting - more oxygen at depth?