O2 and Cypriot airliner crash

"Bucky" wrote in message
oups.com...
I don't get it. Can't a person stay conscious for longer than 30
seconds without breathing? Most people can hold their breath for over
a minute.

When they do that, they are using up a small reserve of oxygen-filled air
contained in their lungs. Exhale as much air from your lungs as you can,
and THEN see how long you can hold your breath.

Peter Duniho wrote:

When they do that, they are using up a small reserve of oxygen-filled air
contained in their lungs. Exhale as much air from your lungs as you can,
and THEN see how long you can hold your breath.

Even then, there's still a lot of oxygen in the lungs, the human lung is
pretty inefficient. What happens at altitude is that you don't feel the
absence of oxygen, hence just continue to breath normally. This empties
your oxygen reserves rather quickly.

On airliners, though, there are instruments which alarm the pilot of
pressure loss and drop the mask immediately. So there must have been
another problem.

Stefan

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
"Bucky" wrote in message
oups.com...
I don't get it. Can't a person stay conscious for longer than 30
seconds without breathing? Most people can hold their breath for over
a minute.

When they do that, they are using up a small reserve of oxygen-filled air
contained in their lungs. Exhale as much air from your lungs as you can,
and THEN see how long you can hold your breath.

Partially crap. Learn how lungs work.

moo

Totally crap. Teach someone how lungs work.

Peter Duniho wrote:
"Bucky" wrote in message
oups.com...

I don't get it. Can't a person stay conscious for longer than 30
seconds without breathing? Most people can hold their breath for over
a minute.


When they do that, they are using up a small reserve of oxygen-filled air
contained in their lungs. Exhale as much air from your lungs as you can,
and THEN see how long you can hold your breath.

At high altitude you breath out the oxygen bound to the hemoglobin in
your blood. Your blood gives up its O2 to the air. Hold your breath or
just stop breathing and you may last longer (never done the experiment
though ;-) ).

Shawn