slucero wrote:a person who weighs 200lbs @ 1 atmosphere would weigh 30,200 lbs @ 151 atmospheres. I was trying to illustrate what that pressure would mean if it were a person standing there on the ocean floor....
anyway you cut it... at that pressure the oil is still way stronger than the pressure exerted by the by the weight of the ocean above it...
I think I understand what your saying. Regardless, in order for someone to "weigh" more, gravity would have to be greater between altittudes. If a person is in a hole in the ground a mile below the surface of the earth, they won't weigh more because gravity of the earth is still the same. However, under water, pressure is built up basically because the water crushes whatever is displacing it, such in this case a human body. It's like if you had a tube a mile high and and inch wide and you filled it all the way up with water, the water pressure at the bottom of this tube full of water would probably weigh the 2,200 pounds that was referenced earlier as the pressure a mile below the surface.
This reminds me when I was a kid I thought I was smart and got a 12 foot section of 1" plastic pipe. I attached it to my snorkle and got in the deep end of the pool. As I approached about the three foot below the surface of the water mark, I had an incredible difficulty breathing in air. I could not breath in air much below the 4 foot mark. For many years I never understood why this was. It seemed so logical, you attach the pipe to the mouth piece of the snorkle and you should be able to breath in air while your deep underwater. It wasn't until I was in high school when I learned about presssures under water. Reflecting back to the time when I was in my pool with the pipe and snorkle setup, what was happening was my body was not strong enough to bring in air, because in doing so, I am displacing the water around my body as I breath in and my chest area gets larger. Three feet and above was not that bad, it's when you got the pressure/weight of that water on top of you. My weight never changed between the time I was a foot under the surface and five feet. The only difference was the weight of the water.
So in this oil drilling deal, if they have an object that weighs two tons a foot below the surface of the water and they lower it a mile down, it will still weigh two tons a mile below the surface.
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