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Robert Boyle was the seventh son of the earl of Cork. He was educated at Eton and then travelled and studied in Europe. He returned from the continent in 1644 extremely interested in science and settled in Dorset where he built a laboratory. In 1655 or 1666, Boyle moved to Oxford. It was here that he engaged Robert Hooke as an assistant and together they devised the most famous piece of experimental equipment associated with Boyle, the vacuum chamber or air-pump.
At this time even the idea of an experiment was controversial. The established method of 'discovering' something was to argue it out, using the established logical rules Aristotle and others had worked out 2,000 years before. Boyle was more interested in observing nature and drawing his conclusions from what actually happened. He was the first prominent scientist to perform controlled experiments and publish his work with details concerning procedure, apparatus and observations. He began to publish in 1659 and continued to do so for the rest of his life on subjects as diverse as philosophy, medicine and religion.
It is Boyle's Law for which he remains most famous. This states that if the volume of a gas is decreased, the pressure increases proportionally. Understanding that his results could be explained if all gases were made of tiny particles, Boyle tried to construct a universal 'corpuscular theory' of chemistry. He defined the modern idea of an 'element', as well as introducing the litmus test to tell acids from bases, and introduced many other standard chemical tests.
In 1660, together with 11 others, Boyle formed the Royal Society in London which met to witness experiments and discuss what we would now call scientific topics. In 1668, Boyle moved permanently to London, living with his sister. In 1680 he refused the presidency of the Royal Society because the oath required violated his strongly held religious principles. Boyle died in London on 31 December 1691.
BOYLE’S LAW—THE BASICS
His law gives the relationship between pressure and volume if temperature and amount are held constant.
If the volume of a container is increased, the pressure decreases. If the volume of a container is decreased, the pressure increases.
Why? Suppose the volume is increased. This means gas molecules have farther to go and they will impact the container walls less often per unit time. This means the gas pressure will be less because there are less molecule impacts per unit time.
If the volume is decreased, the gas molecules have a shorter distance to go, thus striking the walls more often per unit time. This results in pressure being increased because there are more molecule impacts per unit time.
The mathematical form of Boyle's Law is: PV = k This means that the pressure-volume product will always be the same value if the temperature and amount remain constant. This relationship was what Boyle discovered. This is an inverse mathematical relationship. As one quantity goes up in the value, the other goes down.
Use the formula of P1V1 = P2V2 for questions #3-4.
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