Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with hydrogen

Can hydrogen peroxide collapse your lung? (Spontaneous Pneumothorax)

MrBCID — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:47:53 -0800

I use hydrogen peroxide to clean out ear wax; could this have caused a bleb in my lung eventually causing my lung to collapse (spontaneous pneumothorax)? I'm 24 and I recently had a spontaneous pneumothorax (collapsed lung). The culprit was a bleb on the top side of the right lung. Apparently this happens alot to tall skinny people (that's me)... BUT I wonder if there is more to it...

Once in a while (maybe 25-30 times total in my lifetime) I take a cotton ball, soak it in hydrogen peroxide and let about 10-15 drops go into my ear canal to clean out my ear wax (it's supposed to be safer than Q-tips)... I probably leave it in there longer than I should (usually 15 min) then just turn my head and do the other ear...

1 or 2 years ago I left hydrogen peroxide in my ear and fell asleep, when I woke up I had a very sore throat and almost completely lost my voice for 2 days... Obviously the hydrogen peroxide made its way down my throat...

Here is my theory; I was on my side, fell asleep, then the hydrogen peroxide seeped out of my ear canal down my esophagus AND since I was on my side it seeped through my esophagus onto the top side of my right lung and caused a bleb that eventually opened and caused my lung to collapse.

In other words can hydrogen peroxide make it's way onto my lung from my ear canal anywhere between my ear and my esophagus and can that in turn cause a bleb?

Danger! Water contains high levels of hydrogen.

Mcable — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:10:13 -0800

WTF is up with this sign? Background: I live in Louisville, Kentucky. Today I was downtown at the big park on the riverfront shooting reference for a project, and I saw this sign beside of a fountain. Now, since there are two atoms of Hydrogen in each molecule of water already, what's up with this? Is the city parks department pranking us? Is there a legitimate situation in which flowing water at an outside fountain would somehow be infused with extra hydrogen? Discuss.

Hydrogen Powered Cars

mbarryf — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:03:55 -0800

Hydrogen Cars. All the talk we hear now of hydrogen powered automobiles involves fuel cells. How about burning hydrogen directly in an internal combustion engine? I remember seeing a movie set in France during World War II. The vehicles had tubes on the top which someone said contained hydrogen. Thus they were using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine. Was this true? If so, why is there no current investigation into burning hydrogen, rather than using fuel cells?

What should be in my medicine chest?

LobsterMitten — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 19:57:55 -0800

For household first aid, should I use rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide or witch hazel? Growing up, we only ever had rubbing alcohol in the house. Oral thermometers were wiped down with it after each use. Wounds would get washed with soap and water, then doused with rubbing alcohol, then bandaged. But I know others use hydogen peroxide for the same purpose, and someone recently said to me that they use witch hazel. This previous thread suggests that hydrogen peroxide is not a true disinfectant.

What are the proper uses, and drawbacks, of these three substances?

The new Hindenburg 747

pithy comment — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 10:20:37 -0800

Could airplanes be powered by fuel cells? Would we need to develop a new type of jet engine or could the same type of turbine, etc be powered by a fuel cell engine. I don't know much of anything about jet engines, but this seemes like a good place to drastically cut back on fuel costs for the struggling airline industry and perhaps improve safety because airplanes wouldn't need to be flying around with thousands of gallons of explosive jet fuel on board. I suppose they don't have a lot of money for R&D costs and retrofitting lots of airplanes....but that's besides the point of this question.

A question of zeppelins

DieHipsterDie — Sat, 27 May 2006 06:16:23 -0800

Why is Hydrogen inflammable? And not Helium? What's in the chemical makeup of Hydrogen that makes in imflammable. How is it different than a gas like Helium or Nitrogen?

And why does gasoline go boom and not water?

droppin' H-bombs.

delmoi — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 23:32:48 -0800

Why are people so hung up on Lunar Helium-3? What do we need it for? In this thread people talk about Helium-3 mining as a reason to go to the moon, but I don't get it. How can it be cheaper to extract Helium-3 from the moon then it would be to extract Heavy Water from the oceans? I mean, isn't about 0.1% of the hydrogen on earth fusible?

Why go to the moon when we have a practically limitless supply of fusible fuel here on earth?

why does my agua stinka

luriete — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 09:15:31 -0800

The water that comes out of my kitchen sink tap STINKS. Not just the hot water, so I know it's not a chlorine / water heater problem - i.e., I've inspected the water heater & it's fine, and the symptom is more noticeable in cold water anyway. Outside taps don't seem nearly as bad/noticeable, bathroom taps seem OK; the stink disappears if I let the water run full-throttle for about 2 minutes or so. The odor is a very strong, nausea-inducing rotten eggs - I'm guessing it's hydrogen sulfide, but why just this tap? What's the cause? How do I fix it? How much will it cost?

Please help troubleshoot these errors on attempting to install Hydrogen on OSX

The Michael The — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 11:05:43 -0800

Unix/X-Windows Question: I'm attempting to install Hydrogen on my OSX Mac (X11 installed), and when I run "./configure", it throws crazy errors: "checking for g++... no, checking for c++... no, checking for gpp... no, checking for aCC... no, checking for CC... no, checking for cxx... no, checking for cc++... no, checking for cl... no, checking for FCC... no, checking for KCC... no, checking for RCC... no, checking for xlC_r... no, checking for xlC... no." I've had these problems before, in another context, but I can't remember how to install the modules. Hope me! Bonus points for a thorough explanation of the "why," not just "how."