I spend a lot of time thinking about geeky things. This probably isn’t surprising. Also unsurprisingly, a lot of this geekly energy is directed toward inflation.
For example: Water can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen. There have been a few inflation stories that have made use of this device. But have you ever wondered how much expansion results from turning water into hydrogen and oxygen gas?
You probably haven’t, but I have. Yes, this is the sort of silliness I sometimes ponder when working out story plots. Gird thy loins, there’s math afoot.
The short answer: A whole crapload of expansion
The long answer:
Water has a molar mass of 18.0153 g/mol. Since 1 liter of water conveniently weighs 1kg, we can calculate:
18.0153 g/mol * 1 liter/1000 g = 55.5084 mol/liter
And now for the conversion from water to gasses. Oxygen and hydrogen gas are O2 and H2, respectively, so the conversion is:
1 mol H2O = 1 mol H2 + 0.5 mol O2 or
2 mol H2O = 2 mol H2 + 1 mol O2 if you prefer round numbers
Either way, you’re getting one and a half moles of gas for every mol of water.
So 1 liter of water will turn into 83.2627 moles of gas. Truth be told, I always hated working with moles as a unit of measurement in chemistry, but it’s actually kinda convenient for dealing with gasses. One mole of gas takes up the same amount of space at a given temperature and pressure, regardless of the gas. The Ideal Gas Law tells us that 1 mole of gas will take up 24 liters of volume at room temperature.
83.2627 mol * 24 liters/mol = 1998.3037 liters
So when you convert water to hydrogen and oxygen, it increases to roughly 2000 times its original volume.
If some hapless victim were to drink a liter of water which (through some plot device to be determined) spontaneously broke down into its component elements, she’d blow up into a sphere just over five feet in diameter.
The resulting mixture of gas is lighter than air, but you’ll need a lot more than one liter of water to get a person airborne. We can save that math for another time.
Looks like someone's been reading BOOKS...!!
I want to pop so much I could burst!