• PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    You seem to be assuming that the volume is immediately replaced by the external atmosphere, which I doubt is valid

    No, I was assuming your volume decreases. I don’t actually know that to be the case, but my assumption is that there isn’t “extra” space inside a person, and so if you lose material from a part of your body that isn’t encased in anything rigid your volume decreases slightly.

    So maybe I did have my terminology wrong. When a hot air balloon deflates, it falls. The density went up, but that’s not what’s directly relevant. The weight went down, I guess, but the “number on the scale”, weight minus buoyant force, went way way up, because it lost some lower-density volume that was making the whole thing float. The weight (in a strict physics sense) went down, sure. But the number on the scale (which I was incorrectly calling “weight”) went up. Same thing for a farting person.