Sunday, May 15, 2011

Can We Drink Liquid Oxygen?

You can't drink liquid oxygen for a few reasons:

1) The temperature required to liquefy oxygen is extremely low (almost absolute zero). Finding the location and equipment to produce that temperature let alone transferring it to your mouth would cause it to vaporize almost instantly.

2) Even if you got it close to your mouth and managed to get some inside your mouth, it'd be so cold it would instantaneously freeze anything it made contact with. There are several movies and games where liquid nitrogen is used as a freezing agent. Anything that makes contact with liquid nitrogen freezes in a snap.

3) You need oxygen in small amounts (comparatively speaking). The air you breathe only contains about 20% oxygen - the rest is nitrogen, argon, and very small concentrations of CO2 and other stuff.


Plus, if you ingested oxygen, what good would it do unless it was able to diffuse through your body into your circulatory system, and eventually into your lungs? If you tried to touch it with any part of your body your tissues would immediately freeze and it would most likely cause immediate frostbite and you would probably have to have surgery to remove the dead tissue so that your body could try and heal itself. We are always told to be very cautious of liquid oxygen due to its explosive nature. You wouldn't want it to come in contact with any organic material due to extreme reactivity. It would be an interesting experiment though.You could not drink it unless it were so cold it would freeze every part of your body it touched. The burns would be so severe I think your throat would seize up and you would die of suffocation. Liquid oxygen is a very interesting thing.No. It would freeze your face off!Liquid oxygen is a cryogenic liquid. Cryogenic liquids are liquefied gases that have a normal boiling point below -238°F (-150°C). Liquid oxygen has a boiling point of -297.3°F (-183.0°C).if the cold didn't kill you first the 860 to 1 gas expansion ratio would make your stomach explode in about 10 seconds because you could not burp fast enough to relive the pressure build up.No. It is so cold you would not even be able to swallow it. Your jaw and mouth would instantly seize up and shatter into a million pieces, and in the resulting explosion caused by expanding gas your head would be blown right off your neck.Absolutely not. Let's just forget for a moment that pure oxygen is corrosive (and dangerous when it's breathed), the fact that it's liquid means it's either extremely cold or under tremendous pressure.Either situation put in your mouth is not safe.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This article really helped me understand liquid oxygen. I like the perspective that it's written in.
Thanks.