So yeah, as the title says. If you fart do you become lighter because you loose mass or does the loss of buoyancy make you heavier ?

  • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    139
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    18 hours ago

    A balloon full of helium has more mass than a balloon without helium, but less weight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_versus_weight.

    ~~Methane weighs more than nitrogen (70% of atmosphere); you lose weight and mass. Molar mass of nitrogen 7; methane 16. ~~

    https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/19776581

    Edited to comment about mass: Except that a) methane is leaving the body and is not necessarily being replaced; the volume is simply taken up by a contracting colon and b) methane may be less dense than air, but it does contain fecal particles as well, which are tiny but still heavier than air.

    • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      19 hours ago

      At room temperature methane is lighter than the atmosphere on Earth’s surface, not heavier.

      However, pressurized in your body it may he heavier. I see no studies measuring this.

    • ignirtoq@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      2 days ago

      A balloon full of helium has more mass than a balloon without helium, but less weight

      That’s not true. A balloon full of helium has more mass and more weight than a balloon without helium. Weight is dependent only on the mass of the balloon+helium and the mass of the planet (Earth).

      The balloon full of helium displaces way more air than the balloon without helium since it is inflated. The volume of displaced air of the inflated balloon has more weight than the combined weight of the balloon and helium within, so it floats due to buoyancy from the atmosphere. Its weight is the same regardless of the medium it’s in, but the net forces experienced by it are not.

    • Tja@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      2 days ago

      Methane is lighter than air. Methane is indeed ~16 but nitrogen has atomic number 7, molecular mass ~14, and the molecules are N2, so ~28.

    • neoman4426@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      One of those interesting facts I like and will bring up sometimes, the pound and the gram aren’t just different scales for the same thing since the pound is the measure of weight or force and the gram is the measure of mass. In the vast majority of cases most people encounter in everyday life they’ll be roughly interchangeable if you convert, most things being done at roughly 1g with extremely minor variations for location that won’t come up unless you’re doing super precise measurements, buoyancy won’t come into play for majority of things most people are measuring in day to day, etc.