Can you breathe underwater using bubbles of air? A very popular videogame character, which is famous for his sonic speed, is depicted breathing underwater by using air bubbles. Now since I've never heard anyone complaining about this, despite the large amount of people I see complaining about the lack of reality in fiction media, I assume many of them believe it's possible. I hope that's enough to constitute a popular claim by omission. Anyway, considering the air flowing at the bottom of a swimming pool is the same as the ground atmosphere's, is it possible for a human, not a hedgehog, to breath in it? **References** It's been discussed in the Mythbusters forum. * Can you breathe underwater using air bubbles? * Underwater breathing air bubbles? Animals reportedly breathing underwater with air bubbles. * Diving Bell Spiders * Whirligig Beetles

As a scuba diver I can assure you it's possible. One thing you need to do to get your licence is to breathe from a stream of bubbles from a free-flowing (faulty) regulator. That kind of fault causes the air to flow freely from the air tank, generating a major stream of bubbles. By placing your mouth over that stream you can breathe from it. Even though we were less than 1 meter under, to me it was by far the hardest of all the tests, but I did it, and so did everyone else in my class. I just hope I never have to do this deep underwater!

This page explains how to do it.