Dumb advertisement near me had a sign up about their “sparkling pool” which got me thinking…what would it be like to swim in carbonation?
I think you would float better? Probably? Would it hurt more? Would all the released carbon dioxide in the vicinity of the pool be a problem?
In a jacuzzi sized pool where drowning and suffocating aren’t concerns I imagine the tingling would be quite pleasant.
As long as you can continuously get the CO2 out of the way above the surface so you don’t suffocate… you might still die.
“Non-buoyant water” is a real thing. When water contains enough dissolved or finely dispersed gases, it becomes less dense than the human body. There will be no buoyancy force making you float, so if you stop moving you won’t just hang near the surface, you will sink to the bottom like a rock.
Now, maybe you can still generate enough force to tread water if you really tried. Maybe the bubbles themselves getting caught under you would counteract the loss of buoyant force, but the point is that if you carbonated a pool enough, it could possibly be more of a deathtrap than a play area
When I was a kid we went on a field trip to the sewage plant. They had massive tanks (way bigger than swimming pools) full of sewage, and they pumped in large amounts of oxygen in to aerate it all. The worker told us that if anyone fell in there was very little chance of saving them because there was way too much air in the water to float, and you would sink right to the bottom and of course the sewage made it impossible for anyone to see through to find you quickly.
So sparkling sewage, huh?
Tasty!
I swim in creeks and rivers and the bubbly water is very difficult to swim in. Feels a bit like trying to swim in the air. I think carbonation would be similar.
This more a bathing question than a shower thought
Ok the CO2 issue has been addressed by others.
No one is talking about flotation/buoyancy and displacement. Aerated water make you less buoyant and you sink depending how much air is being injected into the water. So no you wont float better, but it would be a cool pool if its not over aerated.
That’s like bubbles right? It would lower your buoyancy and cause you to sink and drown. Fun fact some think this is what the Bermuda triangle was all about, gas bubbles in the ocean and sailors didn’t know or couldn’t react so the ships sank.
I’ve been in a carbonated bath before, although I think it was a light carbonation. Mostly the same, but if sat still for a while, your body turns white from the thin layer of little bubbles stuck to your skin. Pretty fun wiping it off and seeing a cloud of bubbles float up.
I’m pretty sure you would die because the CO2 doesn’t stay dissolved. It would be highly concentrated near the surface and would displace the O2 so when you tried to take a breath near the surface you’d not get enough O2 and would eventually asphyxiate. Just a guess though.
A normal pool probably isn’t big enough (or volcano adjacent, hopefully) to be comparable, but check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limnic_eruption for some worst-case scenarios.
Wow! Ok this was really cool to read about. Thanks!
Definitely. Anytime you’re fermenting in an open vessel, the CO2 builds up and pushes air out. If you stick your face below the lip of the vessel, and breathe in, the tingles get ya.
The scary thing would be nitrogen dissolved in the water. Apparent nitrogen would do the same thing but it doesn’t cause the same starving for air result. You’d just pass out and drown. Although this is also just a guess.
It’s correct. The feeling of running out of air comes from the buildup of CO2, not the lack of 02.
Nitrogen and carbon monoxide just take the place of oxygen in your blood, so you drift off to sleep and never wake up.
The American dream
What about a pool of Guinness that is nitrogenated?
I have to imagine that would be significantly safer. It being thicker means easier to swim in and having a bunch of accumulated nitrogen would be way less problematic than accumulated co2
What I don’t know, however, is if you would gradually get drunk swimming in it somehow which would be more risky
Nitrogen can be very dangerous as you don’t feel the reduction in oxygen and just get sleepy until you pass out unlike CO2 which your body can sense
I feel like it would be both awesome and terrible because I think it might tickle.
Reminds me of the guy who made a swimming pool of jello. There’s a video about it
I’m thinking it could be a lot of fun in a heated whirlpool with adequate ventilation. Bonus pts for tippling some champagne with one’s sexy other. :D
A heated whirlpool would definitely not work. Carbon dioxide rapidly falls out of solution when temperature rises, especially if there is physical agitation of the water. A hot tub is pretty much the most impossible to carbonate body of water.
Ah, thanks for educating.
How about we go in the opposite direction, then-- a non-heated whirlpool, or maybe even a frigid Nordic one, just for gits & shiggles?Alright, so based on the table in this wikipedia article, you reach peak CO2 at freezing and it drops off from there. If you’re aiming for a crisp McDonalds Coke type of carbonation, you’re gonna want to keep that tub below 10 C.
The issue then would be recharging the water with CO2 as it naturally comes out of solution and goes out to further our collective heat death. You’re going to want to get a commercial carbonating system. That’s gonna run you about $600 per this random website I pulled off DDG. . I see no reason to think that the off gassing rate would be faster than what a normal bar soda gun could replace. If you’re in a pinch, you could probably replace all of this section with a constant supply of dry ice, which would also help keep the water from warming up due to your presence.
The final issue that you’re going to run into is survivability. Most tubs have a pretty extensive rims above the waterline. Since CO2 is heavier than air and it’s cooler than ambient air, making it even less buoyant, it’s gonna pool above the water surface, leaving an invisible cloud of immediate death. For a small pool, you’d probably be okay with just a normal box fan angled down to blow against the surface of the water.
It should be doable, but it’s not exactly the easiest or safest thing in the world. It do prolly tickle tho.
Thanks for the extensive dive in to that!
I’m also reminded that large bodies of water sometimes out-gas significantly from underwater vents, volcanoes and such, and that can evidently be disastrous for ships moving on the surface. It’s a highly plausible theory for a number of historic ships rapidly sinking, from what I understand.
No worries, I love weird mental exercises like that. If you’re into that sort of thing, you should check out What If? By Randall Munroe. Excellent couple of books.
IIRC he does a counterpart vblog series. I’ve watched a couple, but definitely needed a big mug of coffee to keep up!
Yes! It’s essentially an entire book based off that concept!
