Only Breathe Gaseous Air

My friend Rhiain sent me a link to a very bizarre story about a guy who actually drank liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen keeps itself insulated with nitrogen gas, and any time something warm is too close it causes nitrogen to boil off, so the blob of actual liquid doesn't contact warm surfaces. Apparently you can roll it around in your mouth as an impressive stunt, but unfortunately the author, though he'd done that, had thought you could also swallow it. Turns out you can't.

So... the consequences... my entire upper GI tract, from epiglottis to the bottom of the stomach was badly burned, scarred, and perforated. The gas also expanded quite a bit while inside my body. It filled my chest cavity with several liters of nitrogen gas, which was under enough pressure to collapse a lung. So after what I'm told was a grueling all-night surgery, they removed part of my stomach, and had my entire digestive system, top to bottom, running on machine power for a while. I also had a breather for the first day or so, until my lung was restored. There are a few details which are considerably uglier which i will spare you.

So... the recovery... they were impressed with my recuperative skills. I could breathe on my own completely after a few days. I could sit up in bed after a week, and was walking in two. About that time, I began to eat again as well. After four weeks, I was up and about again. Now, something like eight weeks, I'm virtually healed, with the exception of a number of unsightly scars.

But.... the good news is that I am the first documented medical case of a cryogenic ingestion. Read the New England Journal of Medicine. Three articles are in review now, and will be published soon, I'm told.

Ah, physics students. I had a pair of physics student friends who performed an ad hoc experiment that wasn't nearly so catastrophic. The shorter one reasoned that if breathing helium makes your voice go up, breathing a heavy inert gas like xenon should make it go down. And wouldn't you know, they had a xenon tank handy, so naturally he took a hit….

Well, he confirmed that the voice drops, which was expected. Then he started turning blue and couldn't really breathe. The taller one reasoned that as helium is lighter than air, it would naturally stay toward the top of your lungs and clear itself out in short order, whereas xenon is much heavier than air and would stay stuck in your lungs. So he picked up the shorter guy and flipped him upside down, holding him by his legs, and sure enough the xenon poured out. The lesson? Don't breathe xenon when you're rightside up, or helium when you're upside down. Then again, sticking to regular air might not be a bad idea. Oh, and make sure it's gaseous, not liquid.