Everyone knows that tub farts are more stinky than their above water counterparts. But why is this?
I like to take baths and I like chili so I have thought on this on many occasions.
My best guess is that the water acts like a syphon filter and removes all but the methane gas and serves to concentrate it on it’s way up. Is this sound reasoning?
Any other ideas?
I used to think it was the flouride in the water but my dad says that tub farts have always been worse and flouride has never been in the water where he grew up.
Hmm, just the other day I found “cowboy bubble bath” in a store, a packet of pinto beans.
I haven’t been able to tell that tub farts smell the same as concentrated natural sources of methane, cow breath. My mother has a pet, Sapphire, a 1200lb bramha cow. She’s affectionate as larve bovines go and likes to sneak up on people. The giveaway is the fwoosh as she exhales, enveloping you in a moist methane cloud.
Man was I suprised! I thought that this might be a physical phenomena problem involving fartation, i.e. how long does it take fartoid to rise in water to the surface. I have to be very careful of what I say or I will be ejected from this site for good, since I already got a warning. But I don’t think that a gas rising through water, even warm water, over such short distance could have any effect on the intensity of its aroma. Maybe it is just the combination of methane and the soap bubble liquid you are using? Now, if you are 5000 ft tall, like the jolly green giant, then there is a chance of some selective absorbtion in the water over the time it would take for a fartoid to rise through the water. Remember though, it would only start out as a fartoid and would end up as, whoa! I don’t think I want to be around when the jolly green giant releases a fartoid, under water or not! But even this doesn’t mean that methane component of a giga-fartiod will necessarily be enhanced.
You might want to research the main sources of the earth’s free methane gas. As I recall the moooooo’s far exceed the ho ho ho’s.
Here’s my WAG. If you pass gass while dressed, the clothing dissipates the gas over a longer time period than the one-time bubble of a tub fart. OR… In a tub fart, it passes through your crotch and bubbles directly under your nose, whereas a normal gas escapes to the rear.
Rather than being projected away from the farter at 20-30 mph, tub farts bubble gently upward. The speed of the bubble when it reaches the surface and breaks is probably low enough that the fart gases are undiluted by turbulant mixing with atmospheric contaminants as they rise towards the nose; in the same way that smoke from an extinguished match will rise in a concentrated stream for several feet before breaking up.
-For EXTRA fun, try eating a teaspoon of garlic an hour or so before climbing into the tub !
It seems that the real reason the aroma is more intense, in the bath tub, is first that the distance from your nose to the origin is essentially the same if your sitting in a bath tub or standing up with the water having a tunneling affect. You’ve probably heard that even small people, like me, have approximately the same torso length as everyone else. The water will help keep the bubble “organized longer”, thus it is more concentrated when it comes out of the bath water. Hydrostatic pressure effects don’t really play a significant role in this problem.
This is very easy to prove. Get in the 9’ end of a swimming pool and get the water up to your nose, and well … it is going to be pretty concentrated if you have good aim … and we don’t have to get in to dispersion theory for this problem. Simply the water acts as a psuedo conduit, just as if you put a piece of plastic tubing from the origin to your nose …
This interests me a great deal since many of my posts are fart-related and thus deemed as politically incorrect. In the spirit of protecting myself from the wrath of fart-despising mods, could you tell me what exactly did you do to get a warning from them?
Assuming the bath water is warm, your nose will be too, and will therefore be more sensitive to smells. Further, the fart itself will cool down less on its way to your nose.
In the same way, hot food is more fragrant than cold food, and you can smell better if your nose is warm anyway.
Don’t forget the concentration effect of a small bathroom and a high-walled tub.
I think it has a lot to do with the exaggerated contrast between bathtub smells (soap, shampoo, etc.) and fart smells. Moon rocks are actually pretty dark, until you see them lit up agains the blackness of space.
We have no problem with people discussing farting here, in whatever terms are most appropriate to the phenomenon, so long as it’s in the right context. I think it’s safe to say that a thread titled “Tub farts” is the right context for such discussions.
DeutschFox’s warning was for a matter completely unrelated to farting. If you dig through the past few days, you’ll find it, but it’s probably best to leave that behind us.
The idea of the water acting as a conduit for the gas makes sense, but as was mentioned before, methane doesn’t smell. It’s minute concentrations of trace gases from bacteria that makes the odor. I know sulphur (in its various chemical incarnations) plays a significant role (I’m sure everybody is familiar with that rotten egg smell).
