Well, I am glad you asked. Actually you didn't ask, but I can imagine.
As we learned on Monday, Boyle's Law is a looser. Let me explain why.
First, Boyle's law (pV=K) is contained in the ideal gas law (pV=nRT), making it a redundant law. This would be like making a law prohibiting men from forgetting their wedding anniversary. Yeah, you could make the law, even get your name on it perhaps, but the fact is the wives will always do a better job on this one than the gov't ever could. Yup, they are the judge jury and executioner. Glad my wife doesn't read this blog. I hope...
Second, Boyle's law only works for ideal gasses, and when was the last time you had one of those laying around; I'll wager never seeing as how they don't actually exist.
Third, this one is the real kicker, but I can't recall what it was. But rest assured, it proved the point.
Mostly all Boyle's Law is good for is calculating the final pressure or volume of a fixed quantity of gas at a given temperature after perturbing the system equilibrium. Or in letters (please imaging the numbers are subscripts), p1V1=p2V2.
Well, Boyle, looks like the only thing you have going for you is that your law came before the ideal gas law. Good for you, and all the millions of chemistry books that now have your name in them. I hope you are happy.
Friday, September 21, 2007
What is the Significance of Boyle's Law?
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2 comments:
"Second, Boyle's law only works for ideal gasses, and when was the last time you had one of those laying around; I'll wager never seeing as how they don't actually exist."
What are the attributes of ideal gas? I've always been under the impression that gas that produces little sound upon escaping, does not hang around in the immediate vicinity (identifying the producer), and smelling of something vicious and decaying.
An ideal gas would do all of these things to such excess that death would result from prolonged exposure, and there would be no trace of the gas' release, and therefore the source.
Such a gas could then truly be perfect, colloquially termed "silent, but deadly".
tommyp, no one is arguing about what attributes an ideal gas would possess. It is a question of existence. I will admit to the occurrence of so called "silent, but deadly" emanations, and as BadAnswer is in fact a pseudonym I will go so far as to admitting to be the source of some such emanations.
Yet, a documented death has never occurred. An alleged darwin winner was reported, but the story has been declared an urban legend. http://darwinawards.com/legends/legends1998-12.html In addition to the legend status, there is no evidence that the flatulence was in fact silent.
So, Ideal gas does not exist, although some anecdotal evidence suggests that Iran's gas centrifuges are not actually for research involving uranium.
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