Amusing Items

[Black Hole]

Is CO heavier or lighter than air?

 

[antipodean]

Is CO heavier or lighter than air?

I believe it is heavier than air, that is why one needs to take serious precautions when cleaning tanks and other containers where you have to crawl inside, even when the top is open.

 

[EEPhil]

Your friendly neighbourhood AI (DuckDuckGo) says slightly lighter than air. Makes sense, my CO detector is higher than the boiler.

 

[EEPhil]

Well, that's confusing. Try..

Is Carbon Monoxide Heavier Than Air? | Safety Guide

Is carbon monoxide heavier than air? Discover the physics behind carbon monoxide behavior and how it affects detector placement and ventilation. Read more!

pksafety.com

 

[gomezz]

By simple reasoning a molecule of CO is heavier than a molecule of O2. But by that same reasoning a molecule of water H2O is much lighter so why does water not float on air? Need a chemist to explain that to this layman.

 

[Black Hole]

It's not just the mass of the constituent atoms, you also have to consider the overall volume those atoms occupy.

 

[Owen Smith]

'Scuse me, but I don't need telling to keep away from nappy buckets (whatever that might be)! It's like the TV adverts telling me to keep away from children. Yes!

There's a famous court case from the US where a woman took a microwave oven manufacturer to court. She'd microwaved her dog to dry it after bathing it, which didn't end well. Her case was the instructions did not say you shouldn't microwave your pet, and she won. Which is why for decades afterwards microwave instructions said not to microwave your pet.

 

[Owen Smith]

By simple reasoning a molecule of CO is heavier than a molecule of O2. But by that same reasoning a molecule of water H2O is much lighter so why does water not float on air? Need a chemist to explain that to this layman.

CO is about the same overall density as air so it spreads far and wide, which is one of the reasons it is so dangerous.