Could you stand on an atmosphere?

[MrZayas1]

So, just a pop question. Suppose we could take an atmosphere and cut it in half, with 1 atm and another pressure next to eachother (which isn't possible), but at what pressure would you be able to stand on the gases below you? I always thought that perhaps it was possible, if not let me know. I assume that different gases have different densities and things so they might take more of a gas than another, but I thought it would be cool to ask

[Thomassino]

I don't think that this is possible with gases... maybe if their temperature are below freezing point and they become solid

[maltesh]

I don't think there's any gas dense enough at one atmosphere of pressure that a human could float on it unassisted.

That said, with a boat light enough and big enough, you could float on the interface between sulfur hexaflouride and air at one atmosphere..

[Ethanadams]

Maybe if you could survive Jupiter and you got near the center of it you could stand

[Tex_NL]

Tungsten hexafluoride is the densest gas at 25 °C and 1.0 atm. But you won't be able to float a 'boat' on it as it is highly corrosive. On contact with water (in air) tungsten hexafluoride gives hydrogen fluoride (HF) and tungsten oxyfluorides, eventually forming tungsten trioxide.

[Ralathon]

Depends on how big your feet are.

We can separate 2 different pressures via plasma windows. So lets say that this technology matures to the point that we can do this experiment.

Now everything depends on the size of your feet. Pressure is force per unit of area, and we need to generate about 700 newtons of force to keep the average human standing. Lets say that the pressure difference is 1 atmosphere. So 1e5 newtons per square meter. Then your feet would need to have a surface area of 7e-3 m2 = 70 cm2. My feet are about 26cm long and 10 wide. I estimate that my feet have about 60% of the surface area of a 26x10cm rectangle. So my feet have a surface area of about 26*10*2*0.6 = 312 cm2. More than enough to avoid falling through the plasma window. In fact, the pressure difference could go all the way down to a quarter of an atmosphere and I'd still be fine.