the air is made of many elements besides oxygen and our lungs manage to cope with that just fine, and filter out all of the non oxygen,
but why then is it impossible for our lungs to filter out hydrogen when it is the only other thing besides oxygen
it would seem to me that it would be EASIER to breath water that to breath air, becuase there is less to deal with!!!
when water evaporates INTO the air, we can breath that, and when water vapor becomes water it is going through only a physicall change, nothing is happening to the oxygen that changes its atom..
why then cant we breath under water
do you think we ever will find a way to do so??
2007-11-28 08:55:36 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Other - Science
to the idiot...
air is made of oxygen and soo many other elements.. including nitrogen hydrogen.. ect..
water is 2 HYDROGEN and 1 OXYGENN
so. you. are. wrong.
2007-11-28 09:05:30 · update #1
The oxygen in water (H2O) is chemically bound to the hydrogen. The water molecule could be broken up to release the oxygen, but that would take a huge input of energy. Lungs don't have the machinery needed to perform that chemical reaction.
Gaseous oxygen (O2) is "free." It just dissolves into the liquid in the lung membranes with no extra input of energy.
We breathe the water vapor that exists naturally in air, but don't get any real benefit from it (except that moist air is more comfortable than absolutely dry air). The oxygen molecules in air are still what matter.
(PS: Something like 80% of the human body is water. That means that something just under 80% of the body's weight is oxygen - but we still need to breathe anyway.)
2007-11-28 09:22:07 · answer #1 · answered by Tom V 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Lungs aren't designed for it. Aquatic animals have a much lower metabolic rate, so they don't need as much oxygen. They are streamlined and nearly weightless, so motion requires very little effort. Whales and dolphins breathe air, but they don't need to do it often. The average human lung capacity is about 5 liters, with each normal breath moving about half a liter. You would need 25 liters of oxygen-saturated water to get as much oxygen as a liter of air.
I have never heard of any plant or animal which extracted oxygen from water by breaking down water molecules. That would be really valuable for deep sea creatures, where there's even less oxygen dissolved in water than near the surface. Instead, these animals have a very low metabolic rate to conserve both oxygen and food.
Human lungs make only slight use of water vapor in air. If the air is humid, the lungs just don't lose as much body water to the air to keep the lung tissues moist.
I'm sure we could develop equipment to extract dissolved oxygen from water. But it's so easy and cheap just to bring it with us in SCUBA tanks.
2007-11-28 20:45:30 · answer #2 · answered by Frank N 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
no!!!
we breathe oxygen not water come on!!! what!?! you want to be a fish now who ever heard of first person ever breathin under water comon not unless it on a movie or cartoons!!
2007-11-28 17:04:04 · answer #3 · answered by TuRtLe 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
There is a great article on HowStuffWorks.com that addresses this:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/question386.htm
I can't summarize it any better than they do, so I'll let the link do the talking...
2007-11-28 17:11:23 · answer #4 · answered by fatrichie72 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I suppose.. it is because of the form change.
I mean. We can't breath any liquid. Very good question!
2007-11-28 17:05:32 · answer #5 · answered by eileen_xo 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
bet a fire bird could
2007-11-28 16:58:24 · answer #6 · answered by Tommy Q. 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋