Talk:High-altitude flatus expulsion

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Boyle's law[edit]

I think the application of Boyle's law here has been mistated. From the article:

Consistent with Boyle's law, controlling for dietary variance, the amount of gas produced is constant in mass, but the volume increases when the difference in pressure diminishes.

I believe it should either state "...the volume increases when the external pressure diminishes" or "...the volume increases when difference in pressure increases".

Could someone verify I'm not misunderstanding something here and should we make a change? Racerx11 (talk) 19:15, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No response in one month so I am going to be bold and make the change. Racerx11 (talk) 03:52, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I now believe the original wording was assuming there is an initial high difference in pressure which causes the problem to begin with. It is then the reaction of the body to equalize the two by expanding the volume, thereby lowering the internal pressure to match the external pressure. Thus the difference is diminished while the volume increases. However, only to a certain point can this continue. The body can only expand so much and eventually stops expanding, causing the internal pressure to rise, therefore increasing the difference between the internal and external pressures until the gas is finally expelled. This took me a while to deduce from the original statement. I hope my edit is less ambiguous. Racerx11 (talk) 04:18, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Boyle's law is not an explanation; Reference 1 is not appropriate[edit]

This article has several problems. Reference 1 does not point to "a landmark study of this phenomenon" but to a very brief, three paragraph note. Further, the offered explanation (both in this Wikipedia article and [1], can't be correct. The increased internal gas volume due to a lowered external pressure surely isn't more than about 10 percent (depending of course the low and high altitude difference). Even if it were 20 percent, the extra volume would surely be expelled in a matter of hours at most. However, people who suffer from this experience greatly increased volume for several days. In other words, the "Boyle's Law" explanation is bogus. And an actual worthwhile reference is needed in place of [1]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.208.2.76 (talk) 07:13, 24 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]