Does Your weight change when you fart?

[Jackmannii]

In a reversal of the usual advice, please do try this at home.

[Chronos]

Gas inside the intestines will cause them to swell like a balloon. But doesn’t it have room inside the body to expand?

What’s in that space normally, when your intestines aren’t expanded into them? Do you think that humans maintain a vacuum space inside our bodies to make room for intestinal expansion?

[cmosdes]

@Chronos

What’s in that space normally, when your intestines aren’t expanded into them? Do you think that humans maintain a vacuum space inside our bodies to make room for intestinal expansion?

What about the esophagus as food passes through it? The stomach after a full meal? Is that just pushing outward? What about a full bladder vs. just after urinating? Is there a deformation I can see on my body that indicates I have a full bladder? People talk about having to unbutton the top button on their pants after a full meal, so I can understand being able to see the effects of a full stomach externally. But does that mean even for a small meal the expansion of the stomach is fully translated externally? I would think there is some internal compression.

[Chronos]

We’re basically made of water, which for all practical purposes is incompressible (even gases are practically incompressible, at the pressures the body can sustain). When any bit of your innards is full, it will cause your body to bulge out, though usually only very slightly.

[Machine_Elf]

@Peter_Morris

That’s the wrong way round. It isn’t breathing in that causes your volume to increase, it’s that increasing your volume will cause air to be sucked in.

:rolleyes:

The process you’re describing - increasing your volume to cause air to be sucked in - is commonly called “breathing.”

Look, the long and short of this is that if you make a cavity inside the body and fill it with something - gas, liquid, or solid - the volume of the body increases. Intestinal gas production involves the conversion of liquid/solid food slurry into gas, with an increase in volume of about 1000X. There’s really no way around this.

I’m not sure if the same thing applies to your butt. Gas inside the intestines will cause them to swell like a balloon. But doesn’t it have room inside the body to expand? I’m not convinced that the body gets smaller when you fart.

“room inside the body to expand”? You mean like a vacuum chamber?

Unless your abs are made of cast iron, they will distend to accomode the increased volume of intestinal gas as it is produced, just as they do when one accumulates abdominal fat; if you are fully submerged in a bathtub that’s filled to the rim, water will spill over the edge of the tub as your gut generates fart gas. The only way your volume won’t increase is if you exert enough pressure on the fart gas to cause it to liquify. Methane and hydrogen don’t liquify until you get to really high pressures and/or really low temperatures, something you’re not likely to encounter in a colon.

Still submerged in that filled-to-the-rim bathtub? Great. Squeeze that fart gas out of your backside; the bubbles rise, pop, and the level of the bathtub falls back down away from the rim just a smidge.

[Cicero]

You may have less weight but you’ll certainly have less friends.