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Make good use of sneezing


Jet2

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by not sneezing?

 

i notice the shiver too, i kind of like the feeling of the pre sneeze, but the sneeze itself (with a cold) may hurt :( we were always told in school a sneeze can travel 12 feet....maybe attaching wind turbines t our mouths when we have a cold??? like a gas mask with a fan that turns a generator.:lol:

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Imho, the idea is fanciful. Sneezes happen so infrequently, and unexpectedly, that the logistics of capturing energy become difficult. Besides, how much energy is available to harvest there? I would imagine the answer to be "not much". :lol:

 

It is a fun idea though. It's fun to fathom nano-turbines and nano-generators feeding the body with electricity, it's not feasible at this point and will maybe never be. It's probably much easier to get massive power from hurricanes, but anyone can see the obvious difficulties there. Sneezing is not too different except that it is on a much smaller scale (and without the pronounced swirling effect, etc.).

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Besides, how much energy is available to harvest there?
It’s possible to make a reasonable upper limit estimate.

 

A typical human lung can expel a maximum of about [math].003 \,\mbox{m}^3[/math] of air in a single exhalation. A typical human respiratory system (primarily the diaphragm) can produce a maximum of about [math]10000 \,\mbox{N} \mbox{m}^{-2}\mbox{s}^{-2}[/math] of pressure. So the most energy that a single exhalation – normal, or explosive, as in a cough or sneeze – can produce is about [math]30 \,\mbox{J}[/math]. My guess would be that a typical sneeze produce only a fraction of this maximum, perhaps [math]5[/math] to [math]10 \,\mbox{J}[/math].

 

That’s not much – about enough to power a laptop computer for 1 second. More, powering things with your breath is distressingly exhausting (try blowing up a lot of balloons as quickly as you can to get a sense of this). Technologists estimate that, without causing undo distress, a well-designed system might generate about [math]1 \,\mbox{W}[/math] of power ([math]1 \,\mbox{J/s}[/math]).

 

Frequent sneezing is especially distressing, and, if too frequent and/or prolonged, traumatic, causing damage to the diaphragm, lungs, trachea, sinuses, and nose, potentially requiring medical treatment.

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It’s possible to make a reasonable upper limit estimate.

 

A typical human lung can expel a maximum of about [math].003 ,mbox{m}^3[/math] of air in a single exhalation.....

 

That's great stuff Craig.

 

Does this kind of information just circle around in your mind, or what?

 

I'm always impressed by your statistical knowledge. :sneeze:

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I notice that when we sneeze, especially when got a bad cold, our whole body will have a sudden and serious shiver and then a great deal of energy would be released with the action.

 

I am just wondering how we can capture those energy and make use of it?

 

It is not clear if that "action" is the sneeze or the shiver. The other respondents covered the sneeze, so I'll get the shiver. :winter_brr:Shivering is the body's way of generating heat by muscular contractions and conserving heat by closing skin pores when the autonomic system detects a drop in core temperature. Since the body needs that energy to restore stasis, drawing it off is probably unwise. :lol:

Askipedia.com - Why do we shiver?

Perhaps a sneeze may trigger a shiver because of the sudden loss of the warm air from the lungs versus a normal exhalation? :( :turtle:

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It’s possible to make a reasonable upper limit estimate.

 

Somehow, in the back of my mind, I knew you were going to respond to those words, as I wrote them. ;)

 

As always, your post is poignant and provocative. You seem to have effectively quantified the energy capabilities of a sneeze. The only thing lacking, imho, is a graphical display which maps your ideas on the subject.

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Reason why I have this idea is because I have nose allergy for years and I just think everyday I sneeze so hard and so often is such a waste!

 

Cough as well. I remember when I had a flu I would easily be woke up in the middle of the night by very bad cough that would normally make my body bent like a shrimp. With every cough I made there would be body heat and sweat come along.

 

I am not a scientist so I think it would be great if you guys could come up something to fight the sneeze and cough not by curing it but by creating additional value to it. ;)

 

Everything have two sides (at least), how nice is it if we could find the bright sides of sickness and make life more enjoyable.

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I, too, sneeze very regularly. It is usually one of the first things I do when I wake up in the morning. Strangely it is usually in threes too. It seems that three sneezes is just the right amount of air flow to satisfy my nose’s oversensitivity to everything form pet hair to the mere mention of (dramatic music) dust. I think I could be quite productive hooked up to a couple of turbines all day rubbing a cat against my nose. In fact I think I have found my purpose in life, hurrah!

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I sneeze so hard and so often is such a waste!
Certainly it's a waste, every sneeze uses a few of the calories of the food you've eaten! Sneeze less and save money on food! :D

 

Well, if you can't help sneezing you can't save the money on food, but I doubt you can recover much of the calories used. I think only a smallish fraction of the total energy consumption will come out as air pressure. The whole system of muscular contractions, the shivering, if you count everything it's just a lot of energy going down the drain but we're always doing that anyway, whatever we do. It's all a matter of what you do and how much. Even just running the body's metabolism in the most favourable conditions uses energy, but for a healthy lifestyle you need a lot of physical activity and certainly more than the sneezing!

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Certainly it's a waste, every sneeze uses a few of the calories of the food you've eaten! Sneeze less and save money on food!
Well, it doesn't have to be a waste...the next time you have a sneezing fit, go outside and sit on your skateboard backwards. You'll be at the store in no time! :D

 

When God sneezed, I didn't know what to say, :)

Buffy

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Well, it doesn't have to be a waste...the next time you have a sneezing fit, go outside and sit on your skateboard backwards. You'll be at the store in no time!

 

That's a nice idea.

How I wish we could control / manage when to sneeze then...

Imagine this, if the runner in the 100M race can blow a sneeze when he is approaching the finishing line, it may be easier for him to break the world record...

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some people say sneezing is 1/8th of an orgasm

I don't know HOW 'they' came up with that.

Maybe sneezes have to deal with sexual energy or something,

and you're sneezing off some stagnant energy when you blast snot out of your nose.

Also might indicate the nadhi switch your nostrils make every hour and a half or so. Er, in other words, one nostril dominates the other and they switch all the time.

Just tying things together . . make of it what you wish.

If you believe in little red minions with tridents that inhabit your soul then you can just pretend you're launching them out of the sun that's burning inside your belly keeping your own human constellation in gravitational balance.

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How I wish we could control / manage when to sneeze then...

Imagine this, if the runner in the 100M race can blow a sneeze when he is approaching the finishing line, it may be easier for him to break the world record...

Sneezes are pretty neurologically disruptive, briefly impairing your ability to do anything coordinated, so I don’t think sneezing during a footrace would be a helpful thing. The tiny amount of thrust from the rapid exhalation would surely be more than offset this disruptive effect.

 

I can’t personally recall ever sneezing during a short race, though I have coughed during a 200 m, with no significant good or bad effect on my time.

 

I once inhaled a gigantic moth in the last 50 m of a 400 m, and could not inhale of exhale fully until finishing the race and dropping hard to my hands and knees on the infield and coughing it out, rather like a really big housecat with a hairball - not my finest track and field photo op moment. :) I won by a long shot, though, and was within .2 s of my then personal best.

 

Sneezing seems at best to be good for clearing irritants and contaminated mucus from your nose, and not even all that great at doing that – intentionally exhaling through one nostril at a time seems to be more effective. A bit along the lines of some of practices orby mentions, I’ve known several people who perform some very elaborate nose-cleanings involving training themselves to voluntarily flush their noses with water. One of them included a goodly dose of powdered cayenne pepper in the water! All described this as “a Sufi trick”, and encouraged me to learn it. Though it seemed to make reasonable medical sense that periodically cleaning your nose very well would enhance your health, I couldn’t master the trick of voluntarily blowing water through my nose! :D

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