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Re: CO2

Hi all-
Hint: Every skindiver hyperventilates before submerging.
Regards,
Jack

On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, John S. Denker wrote:

-- People are very sensitive to their internal CO2 levels. This directly
drives the urge to breathe. Can you design a non-hazardous experiment to
test this?

At 09:03 PM 8/21/01 -0400, S Goelzer wrote:

Pour a fresh soda with fizz into a tall glass. Fill the glass half way. If
it foams normally, you will have glass filled with a layer of CO2. Tilt
glass up as if to drink but breath in through your nose with liquid resting
against your lips. The need to take a clear breath is quite startling. Would
this be a valid demo?

Sure, that's a valid contribution. That strongly supports the hypothesis
that CO2 is important.

Now, for completeness, we need to rule out competing hypotheses. In this
case, the obvious competing hypothesis is that there is nothing special
about the CO2 in the glass, and it is merely _displacing_ the all-important
oxygen. Can you design a couple of supplementary experiments to rule this out?


--
Franz Kafka's novels and novella's are so Kafkaesque that one has to
wonder at the enormity of coincidence required to have produced a writer
named Kafka to write them.
Greg Nagan from "The Metamorphosis" in
<The 5-MINUTE ILIAD and Other Classics>