Medical puzzle, steam pressure and vacuum

Christian Egli

This is what has me puzzled. It's my lungs.

Not unlike the steam boiler, I picture myself building pressure. I had to try. With my mouth, I can blow into a pressure gauge and I develop a whopping 1.5 PSI. If I push as hard as I can, I get 1.7 PSI over the atmospheric pressure, beyond that, I'm out of puff.

That's that. Steam boilers do the same, so I'm impressed.

Next, I find that I also have the ability to suck my own vacuum, like a human vacuumizer. So, I suck on a gauge and it turns out I am more of a super-human vacuumizer than I thought. The gauge easily drops to 10 inHg. With a little work, I get it down to 15-20 inHg. This corresponds to about 8 PSI below the atmospheric pressure.

How on earth can I go to +1.7 PSI one way, and -8 PSI the other way? I had rather expected a nice and symmetrical +1.7 PSI and -1.7 PSI. When I am relaxed, the gauge points to zero. What do my lung muscles do one way that they won't do the other?

Is there a doctor on board?

Just think of how much more effective the big bad wolf would be at sucking away the home of the little piggy rather than blowing, the way he does.

bob_44

This ain't no forced air site

Christian, this place is about pumping away. Your lungs ain't nothin. Your body has 60,000 MILES of pipe in it and two little diaphragm pumps in series with one motor and it pumps about 1.25 gpm through that 60,000 miles of pipe! I wonder where the PONPC is ? Are you the Egli that builds the motor cycles? bob

Mike T., Swampeast MO

When you're sucking to produce a vacuum you can hold the vacuum in your mouth with your tongue. You can even continue to breathe as you add vacuum. No such mechanism when you blow.

Al Corelli - Agix Associates

Vacuum is mouth generated via cheek and tongue.

Pressure is generated by compressing the diaphragm.

Try to make pressure with the cheeks and tongue. You will be surprised.

Christian Egli

Still blown away

My vacuumizing skill has not made me as famous as the Egli Motorcycles. That's Fritz Egli, and there are boat loads of Eglis over there.

I don't know if we share some genes, but the town his company is in is located only about 5 miles away from where my ancestors came from.

Christian Egli

Booked solid

Well, it seems my day is booked solid for tomorrow...

I'll be blowing and sucking with my tongue and my cheeks. And I'll see how long I can do this while breathing at the same time.

Is this what horn and trombone and tuba players do to make sounds? I'll bet they have more puff than me.

Hope to be surprised.

Thanks

Ted Robinson

in / out

Very non-medical observation: We breath by pulling in the air. It must be that we are most efficient as inhallers. When we relax, we just let the air out. Sounds good?

Dean_7

pressure

It's the 14.7 psi atmospheric pressure. When you are exhaling you have to work against the atmospheric pressure. When you are inhaling the atmospheric pressure is working for you. A reverse analogy would be trying to snorkel with a three foot long hose. The ambient pressure is greater than the atmospheric pressure consequently you can't inhale but you can exhale.

Mitch_4

but..

is it piped primary/sec? and how many feet of head are required...canI replace it with a 3 speed grundfos?

he he he

Boiler Guy

Christian

Me thinks thou hast too much time on your hands lol

jp_2

diaphram?

I would think your diaphram muscle works in one direction.

I am guessing to inhale the muscle contracts, and exhale the muscle just relaxes? so the relaxing muscle can't do as much work as a contracting muscle?

just a guess

Fred Robinson

Amazing, twelve respones and not one that was either lewd or crude. You guys's are impressive.

Steve Garson

JP hit the nail on the head...

Your diaphram is designed to pull and draw air into the lungs, so it works to pull or vacuum. Breathing out or blowing is the release of the diaphram and is more passive.

Christian Egli

Can you suck the fun out of this?

Lewd or crude? Mitch would have me replaced by a Grundfos pump... 3 speed no less, but still... I thought I was doing as good as a steam boiler.

Anyway, I spent a little more time looking into this. The pump idea got my sight zeroing in on the vacuum cleaner.

I found our most powerful shop vac, turned it on, and measured. On the blowing side, it will produce +1.8 PSI tops (surprisingly little, isn't it?). Now, on the other side, it will suck deep down to -50 inH2O.

Convert that, and you get: -1.8 PSI. Wow! it's totally symmetric, like we wanted our lungs to be. So, the shop vac bios are: +1.8 / -1.8 PSI, with no cheek-ing.

I still insist I am better than a Grundfoss. According to Al and Mike, I not only have lungs but two cheeks and a tongue with which to build pressure. This made me think of Louis Armstrong, the Jazz musician. He had cheeks developed like grapefruits. In fact, my cheeks feel a bit sore tonight... this is science.

I measured my breath. With carefully using only my lungs and diaphragm, I consistently exhaled to +18 inH2O and inhaled to... -18 inH2O. Symmetric! I'm ecstatic, even though for all my bravado this turns out to be only +0.66 / -0.66 PSI. I'm outdone by the common shop vac.

But wait, if I kick in the cheek action, I can go up to +1.9 PSI (this result is already better than the other day, I'm building some cheek muscle tone). On the vacuum side I still can go to -8 PSI. I bury the vacuum cleaner in the dust.

The cheek results are not symmetric, but I am sure I could do better with exercise. The frozen milk shakes have provided me with good workouts it seems.

Louis Armstrong must have been a compressor.

I long thought the atmosphere might have something to do with the asymmetry, my breathing would put me on one side of a seesaw with the atmosphere and all its weight on the other. Like playing seesaw with an elephant, it would be tremendously harder to go one way rather than the other.

But, though hard headed, I am not a pressure vessel and I can do nothing to exclude the atmosphere out. My innards are generally at the same pressure as the air we breathe. Do you explode, just like that? I hope not.

The atmospheric pressure is neutral in this game. It sits on both side of the seesaw, on the shoulders of the kids. Me, blowing into a pressure gauge is the same as me blowing into a paper bag. The atmosphere crushes both sides equally. I just have a little more spine than the bag. I look different too.

Furthermore, I find no springy-ness to my lungs, I think it is equally easy to hold air in, or out. It's real easy to stop breathing at any point, it's just hard to stop breathing for a long time.

I also found that I can normally breathe in and out through the nose - that's lung action - while I try building either pressure or vacuum with the mouth. Amazing. If you're reading this while drinking milk, watch out, it might come out your nostrils. Amazing.

Thanks all for reading, and Al Corelli and Mike T. for turning the light on. I think we can all breathe more easily now.

Christian Egli