AP Chemistry: Blood coagulation and partial pressure in The Martian — Fact or Fiction?

In the opening act of The Martian, Matt Damon’s character Mark Watney gets stabbed by a piece of space debris, and his suit gets punctured. However, while this incident should’ve left Mark Watney for dead. After spending a few hours unconscious, Watney explains that the gunky residue of his blood clogged the hole in his space suit, which prevented oxygen from escaping. When seniors Sameera Malepati and Cynthia Shen and juniors Nikash Narula and Joshua Tai saw this scene, they had to research further. While watching the movie, the team kept note of all ideas that intrigued them — certain aspects in the movie that seemed interesting or too good to be true. According to Shen, the group called this list the “Book of Ideas”. “We focused around the research the question — then we broke it down into 2 parts: first is the blood coagulation and then there was the pressure and gas in the suit,” Shen said. “So once we broke down the question then we could focus on different aspect of the research...