Boyle’s law and Charles’ law are in essence simple concepts, and ones that we can see in everyday life. While they might seem rather dull and mathematical, Boyle’s law is essential to our wellbeing and even our existence, and Charles’ law provides the foundations of the fundamental ideas behind some of science’s most important innovations. Together these laws form the universal gas law.
The Irish chemist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) is widely regarded as being the father of modern chemistry. In his book The Sceptical Chymist (1661), he put aside the archaic and random methods of alchemy, dismissed the ancient ideas of the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) and stressed the great importance of sticking to a scientific method — the same sort of method that we twenty-first century chemists use today. However, while it is right that he should bear this august distinction, we probably best know him as the discoverer (in 1662) of Boyle’s law. Boyle’s law tells us that the pressure of a gas is inversely proportional to its volume. The law forms part of the universal gas equation: PV = nRT (Box 1). This is clearly useful in allowing us to work out moles of gas and so on when doing chemical equations, but how does it affect our everyday lives?
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