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Scuba

S.C.U.B.A. = Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. Here is all the information you need to learn and be safe while enjoying this great sport. Explore the last frontier and uncharted depths in the S.C.U.B.A. category.

500 Questions

How deep is 5 bars?

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Asked by Wiki User

Actually, 5 ATM can either be 132 feet or 165 feet. We all have 1 ATM above us (the air/sky/atmosphere) that creates a constant pressure.

Sooo.. 1 ATM + 4 ATM (33ft per ATM) = 132 feet underwater. However, if you actually mean 5 ATM UNDERWATER, then it would be 6 ATM (1 ATM + 5 ATM underwater) for the equation which would equal 165 feet.

Hope this helps!

Why was the scuba diving suit invented?

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So that the scuba diver could go more streamline in the water.

How much to hydro test a scuba tank?

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typically around $20-$30 depending on where you get it done, just ask around for the best price. also check the local fire station, a lot of times they know where to get it done cheap since they have to get tanks hydroed all the time

How much weights a scuba diver needs to dive in the ocean?

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Weight needed for scuba divingThe less overweighted you are, the more control you'll have over your buoyancy and trim. Ideally you want just enough to sink at the END of your dive - so on the surface, with a (mostly) empty tank, no air in the BCD, and no air pockets in the wetsuit you should be able and easily descend.

The fine-tuning is a judgment call. Some prefer to be able to just exhale and drop and carry an extra pound or so to do so. Others feel that not carrying the extra pound is worth possibly needing to do a surface dive to get down to a level where the wetsuit compresses enough to make you neutrally buoyant. Note that if you are too light you risk not being able to do a safety stop in shallow water with an almost empty tank. A full tank can be as much as 6 lbs heavier than an empty one.

Depending on the tank, the suit you wear, and your body type, weights could range from 0 to 40 lbs of lead. A medium build person with a 5-7mm suit diving an aluminum 80 cf tank may average 20-25 lbs of lead in salt water. The difference between lead needed for salt or fresh water can be almost 6 lbs.

How do scuba divers keep from floating to the surface of the water?

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The Marines have a special kind of SCUBA system (called a re-breather) that recycles the air for them, which prevents the bubbles from being seen from enemy sights. In recreational diving however, we only have a semi-closed re-breather, which partially recycles the air. It does not completely eliminate the bubbles, but it reduces them.

Do scuba divers breath pure oxygen?

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Believe it or not, we can die from too little oxygen AND too much oxygen.

This concept involves partial pressures.

If we first consider using standard air (i.e. 20% Oxygen and 80% Nitrogen):

(1 bar = 1 kilogram of pressure per square centimetre)

At the surface - Total Pressure of air = 1 bar

- Pressure of Oxygen = 0.2 bar

- Pressure of Nitrogen = 0.8 bar

At 10m - Total Pressure of air = 2 bar

- Pressure of Oxygen = 0.4 bar

- Pressure of Nitrogen = 1.6 bar

At 20m - Total Pressure of air = 3 bar

- Pressure of Oxygen = 0.6 bar

- Pressure of Nitrogen = 2.4 bar

At 30m - Total Pressure of air = 4 bar

- Pressure of Oxygen = 0.8 bar

- Pressure of Nitrogen = 3.2 bar

At 40m - Total Pressure of air = 5 bar

- Pressure of Oxygen = 1.0 bar

- Pressure of Nitrogen = 4.0 bar

At 50m - Total Pressure of air = 6 bar

- Pressure of Oxygen = 1.2 bar

- Pressure of Nitrogen = 4.8 bar

At 60m - Total Pressure of air = 7 bar

- Pressure of Oxygen = 1.4 bar

- Pressure of Nitrogen = 5.6 bar

At 70m - Total Pressure of air = 8 bar

- Pressure of Oxygen = 1.6 bar

- Pressure of Nitrogen = 6.4 bar

It is at the partial pressure of 1.6 bar (which occurs at 70m where oxygen becomes toxic. That is why most dive organisations recommend 50m as a maximum for recreational diving.

However, if pure oxygen is used:

At surface - Pressure of Oxygen = 1 bar

At 10m - Pressure of oxygen = 2 bar

The oxygen has already become toxic!

Hope that answers your question. The concept is called "partial pressures" and "oxygen toxicity" if you want to research more on a search engine.

How does a scuba diver suit help protect them from the ocean?

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Sea snakes are actually relatively rare creatures. Divers who dive in areas where sea snakes are known to exist (Western Pacific and Indian Ocean) simply take care not to interfere with the animals (which are actually quite docile). Sea snake bites are rare in themselves, and usually happen to paddlers who step accidentally on the snake.

What must a diver do to resurface?

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This question is a little vague. To answer in the simplest terms...swim to the surface at a rate of no more than one foot per second. After long dives or deep depths, divers should make a safety stop for several minutes before finally breaking the surface to be certain that the necessary amount of excess nitrogen has been expelled from the body.

Is air in a scuba tank a liquid and a gas?

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The air inside SCUBA tanks is, usually, just regular air that has been compressed and "jammed" into a tank. Some diving applications utilize gas mixtures of oxygen, nitrogen (and sometimes hydrogen).

What is a repetitive dive in scuba diving?

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Answer

A repetitive dive is any dive that occurs before off-gassing of nitrogen has completed. This time will vary depending on the dive, and the dive table used. US Navy Dive tables give a maximum length of time for this to occur as 12 hours, while NAUI dive tables put it at 24 hours. Under PADI tables you only have 6 hours to off gas completely. When in doubt being conservative does not hurt but pushing the boundaries certainly can.

For comparison purposes, a side-by-side exam will easily show U.S.Navy Dive Tables to be the 'safest', or most conservative, giving the longest decompression /out gas times, next safest are the (sadly) now-defunct NAUI tables, which are only slightly less 'safe', or conservative, while the resort/hotel/rental industry-sponsored PADI 'tables' are simply designed to let a diver belt down a couple more beer on the 'safety' boat before diving again.

Answer

As far as what is most conservative, it depends on the profile. For a single dive, the U.S. Navy is not the most conservative. But for repetitive dives, it can be more conservative. The question should be simplified to what is the time needed before previous dives do not need to be considered. For some mild moderate dives, PADI's 6 hour surface interval with the RDP works very well. But if many dives are being made, then 6 hours may not be long enough to be considered "clean."

When did diving begin?

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332 bc

Why do free-divers sink at depth?

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The cartesian diver sinks because the diver wants to get to a place of low pressure

What does it feel like to deep sea dive?

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Its alot thicker than regular water and you float alot eaisier. You float eaisier because of the salt content.

How are flying and scuba diving related?

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If you fly before you dive, then not much (except sometimes you are a bit dehydrated after flying).

However, if you dive before you fly, then bad things can happen. When you dive, your body absorbs nitrogen into your tissues. When you are on the surface after the dive, those gases slowly leave your tissues. However, if you go in an aircraft (especially an unpressurised one), or otherwise ascend to high altitude, the air pressure is much lower, so that gas wants to leave your tissues more quickly, which can form bubbles that lead to decompression sickness.

The risk varies with how deep you have gone, how long you stayed at depth, and how soon afterwards you fly. Most dive agencies recommend that you do not fly for 12 - 24 hours after your last dive. The US Navy recommends a minimum of 4 hours before flying on the assumption that the dive was not a dive involving mandatory decompression stops.
At sea level we all have roughly 15 lbs per square inch of pressure on our bodies (14.7 for the hair-splitters out there). The amount of gas (nitrogen for this explanation) that can and will dissolve in the bodily fluids is related to the amount of pressure applied to the body. For every 33 feet a body is submerged, the atmospheric pressure is doubled. So, for a depth of 33 feet, a diver's body is under 2 atm. 66 feet (often the limit of "Sport diving") that pressure equals to 3 atm. As Boyle's law states, the volume of gas dissolved in solution will double with the square of the pressure. What this means in English is that the more pressure applied to a body, the more gas will dissolve into the liquid. Imagine examining a fresh bottle of Sprite- one sees a clear, colorless liquid with no bubbles. Now crack open that same bottle quickly, and thousands of bubbles form; this is because the pressure on the liquid was released quickly. A diver that goes to a depth absorbs more of the gasses from his or her mix than someone at sea-level. Send that same diver up in a plane soon after diving and his or her blood and lymph behaves like that Sprite; gas bubbles form and cause debilitation pain (the Bends), neurologic or pulmonogic accidents or even death.

If your scuba tank lasts 60 minutes on the surface how long will it last at 99 feet below the surface?

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Asked by Wiki User

Every diver has a different SAC rate (Surface Air Consumption rate). We all breathe in different amounts of air, and have different breathing rates. It also depends on how deep you're talking. Remember, for every 30-33 feet down you go, the pressure reduces the volume in half.

Answer you're probably looking for:

an aluminum 80 cubic foot tank, at about 30 to 50 feet will last me 45 to 60 minutes.

I just noticed the other question at the bottom of this:

The effect of increased water depth on a scuba diver?

Now here's the fun question to answer. Breathing compressed air at depth can be DANGEROUS. Let's say you take a breath of air at 30 feet, and then hold your breath while you come up to the surface (NEVER DO THIS!). The volume of the air in your lungs would double. Odds are your lungs can not hold this much volume, and you can cause your lungs to explode (collapse)

Another effect of breathing air at depth is called "Nitrogen Narcosis". Air is basically 21% oxygen, 79% nitrogen. At the surface ... not a problem. BUT if you're breathing air at depth, the Nitrogen starts messing with you a bit.

The first way is Nitrogen Narcosis. It affects your ability to think. The best way I've ever heard this described is the "Martini Effect". For every 30 feet down you go, it's like having a vodka martini on an empty stomach. So if you're at 120 feet, it's like 4 martinis on an empty stomach. Kinda tipsy.

Now, for the DANGEROUS aspect of Nitrogen at depth. Your lungs take air, and put it into your blood stream. Again, at the surface, this is not a problem. And when you're at depth this isn't necessarily a problem. Where you run into a problem is surfacing. If you come up too fast, or miss your decompression stops which allow you to offgas the nitrogen, nitrogen can form bubbles in your blood stream. The severity of this ranges depending on how deep you are, and how long you were at depth. Scuba divers have computers and dive tables to figure these things out. If you have the nitrogen bubbles forming in your blood stream, it's called "Decompression Illness" or more commonly "The Benz". Treatment can be a range from doing nothing and letting your body to naturally offgas, to having to go into a decompression chamber which puts you back into pressure as if you were at depth and then bring you back slowly. This is of course assuming you survive to get to a hospital with a chamber. Some divers die before they hit the surface. The worst case I've heard of was where they attempted to draw blood from a diver, and the blood had so many bubbles in it ... it was a FOAM. (That diver lost his life before reaching the hospital).

How much air is in a single breath?

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Asked by Wiki User

The average adult at rest inhales and exhales something like 7 or 8 liters (about one-fourth of a cubic foot) of air per minute. That totals something like 11,000 liters of air (388 cubic feet) in a day.

What are pearl diving disadventages?

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Asked by Wiki User

because they found better and safer jobs.

Why is a diving limit set for scuba diving?

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For humans, the intense increasing in pressure at great depths would be fatal.

Some fish cannot live at depths for this reason as well, but aslo due to the low oxygen concentrations.

ANS2:A sport diver is limited to 130 feet because at that depth the partial pressure of oxygen in compressed air is 100% and oxygen toxicity would be a problem. Mixed-gas divers (professional divers) can go deeper because they use mixtures of gases that minimize the effects of both oxygen toxicity and nitrogen narcosis.

The link claims that a 3-gas mix allowed diving to a depth of 2132 feet.

World record for deep sea diving?

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Women: Stefka Kostadinova of Bulgaria set the women's world record for the high jump in 1987 at a height of 2.09 meters(6 feet, 10 1/4 inches). It is the longest standing world record in the history of the high jump.

Men: Javier Sotomayor of Cuba who jumped 2.45 meters on 27th July 1993

What pressure is the air stored insides a scuba tank?

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Asked by Wiki User

Really as long as you want. You can store it at lower than 100 PSI for a long time, and you can store it in your basement. I really wouldn't store it with the cap off, but somehow you would need to mark it if you know it is almost at 100 PSI, because even the best divers cannot dive with 100 PSI safely. I wouldn't store it at full pressure, especially on a really hot day.

Do divers hear better underwater?

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Asked by Wiki User

They can hear more, but not better.

Because of the density of water, vibrations are changed in pitch, and may be muffled and garbled. Since clarity is the most important factor in hearing, underwater communication is mostly done by hand signals instead.

On the other hand, sound moves more quickly underwater, and as a result you can hear from a greater distance. Things can be heard from a lot further away and/or are louder than in air. Unfortunately, because of the higher speed, and reflections from the bottom, sound direction is almost impossible to determine by ear.

What are Strengths and weaknesses of scuba diving?

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Asked by Wiki User

This is a pretty poorly worded question!!

Advantages of Scuba over what?

One advantage is you dont drown!

Bit more info needed to answer this one!

Where can you get a PADI certification?

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Asked by Wiki User

You can get a PADI certification at any PADI dive shop. The best thing to do is to contact a dive shop in your area and ask about their scuba certifications. If they do not offer PADI certification, they will likely know who in your area does. To find a local PADI dive center, just go to PADI.com and click on Start Diving, which will take you to the shop locater.

Is it ok to hold your breath in scuba?

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Asked by Wiki User

There are a couple reasons why you shouldn't hold your breath. First off, holding your breath trying to conserve air could lead to passing out. Slow breathing also helps you relax. Also if you hold your breath at depth and head to the surface, the air in your lungs can expand causing an over expansion of your lungs. A very serious and sometimes life threatening injury.

Why are astronauts are trained in scuba diving?

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It simulates weightlesness and using tools in a confined environment. Good training for Nauts.