Irish Joy Dulay

Grade 12 STEM Block 1

Boyle’s Law and Real Life Examples

What is Boyle’s Law?

Boyle’s law states that the pressure exerted by a gas is

inversely proportional to its volume at a constant
temperature in a closed system. This means that as the
pressure increases, the volume decreases and vice versa.
Robert Boyle (1627 to 1691)

The Boyle’s law is named after Robert Boyle who is

regarded as one of the founders of modern chemistry.
Boyle was greatly influenced by his colleague at Oxford
University, Robert Hooke, who formulated Hooke’s law for
elasticity in springs. He likened gas particles to “springs
of air.” He then conducted his famous mercury U-Tube
experiment to arrive at the findings for formulating
Boyle’s law.
Real Life Examples of Boyle’s Law

Let us now look at some real life

examples of Boyle’s law.

 A simple example of a real life

situation would be the popping of
a balloon! When we squeeze the
balloon (putting pressure on it), the volume inside is actually
reducing. Since the balloon can't
handle the extra pressure, it
bursts.

 Another example would be the

bubbles a scuba diver exhales as
they approach the surface of the
ocean, the pressure put forth by
Irish Joy Dulay
Grade 12 STEM Block 1
the weight of the water decreases
with depth. Therefore the volume
of the bubbles increases as they
rise.

 You will also experience Boyle’s

law if you fly in an airplane. If
you have flown in an airplane, what happens during take-of
and landing? Your ears will pop. This is because as there is
an increase in altitude, there will be a change in air pressure
from high to low pressure. This causes a variation of air
pressure inside and outside the eardrums. In the ears, the
air in the air space of the ears will increase in volume which
causes the ears to pop due to the eardrums feeling the
strain. This is the reason passengers are given a boiled
sweet to suck on and are encouraged to swallow hard. The
air that has expanded out can then escape through the
throat opening.
 In aerosols such as spray paints
or deodorants, there are usually
two components inside the can,
i.e., the primary liquid product
such as paint or perfume, and a
gas which is sealed and kept in a
highly pressurized state so that it
is kept at a liquid state even at its boiling point, which is
usually below room temperature. When you push the nozzle
of the aerosol can down, the seal on the liquid gas is opened,
reducing the pressure, and giving it an escape route. The gas
instantly starts to boil, changing into a gas of increasing
volume, and pushing the perfume or paint out of the can in
its eforts to move into an area with lesser pressure. This
same principle can be seen in fire extinguishers too.
Irish Joy Dulay
Grade 12 STEM Block 1

 Boyle's law is essential for the

human breathing process. As the
muscles of the diaphragm
contract, the decreased pressure
causes the volume of the thoracic
cavity to expand as you breathe
in. When you breathe out, the
volume of the thoracic cavity
goes down, increasing the pressure on the lungs, and
pushing air out. Thus, our very lives are dependent on
Boyle's law.

Queen Victoria and many of her descendants carried what was once called
"Royal disease"—now known as hemophilia, a blood clotting disorder. But it
has remained unknown precisely what variety of the disease afflicted the
family and how many deceased relatives may have had the inherited disease.

Hemophilia is caused by a mutation—likely spontaneous in Victoria's case—on

the X chromosome and can be passed along the maternal line of families. It is
also recessive and is more commonly exhibited in males, causing it to go
undetected in many carriers, who may pass it on to future generations. Those
who manifest the disease often have excessive bleeding, as the blood does not
properly coagulate, which can lead to pain and even death.

The authors of the new study, led by Evgeny Rogaev of the University of
Massachusetts Medical School and Lomonosov Moscow State University in
Russia, sampled bones found in the Ural Mountains in 2007 now known to
belong to the son of Russian Empress Alexandra (Victoria's granddaughter),
Crown Prince Alexei, and one of his sisters.

Using sequencing and amplification techniques, the investigators were able to

obtain gene sequences from the 91-year-old material. They found a mutation
that would have led to an "abnormal splicing site" on the factor IX gene, a tale-
tell sign of hemophilia B, which is far more rare than hemophilia A and now
appears to be extinct in the European royal lines. Hemophilia A is a clotting
factor VIII deficiency (factor VIII assists with blood coagulation), while
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Grade 12 STEM Block 1
hemophilia B is a clotting factor IX deficiency (factor IX is an enzyme in the
coagulation system).

It wasn't, however, hemophilia B that killed the Russian prince and his sister—
likely Anastasia—rumored to have escaped the Bolshevik revolutionaries who
assassinated the other Romanovs in 1918. After the remains of two individuals
were discovered in the Ural Mountains, Rogaev analyzed fragments of bone
and traced the genetic lineage back to the same
immediate Romanov family. His findings (published in February in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) confirmed that the
remains indeed were those of the last two Romanov children and that, like
their family members who had been discovered in 1991, they had been
murdered. Had the family survived, however, they may have continued
passing on the disease to future generations, the new pathogenic analysis
shows.
Irish Joy Dulay
Grade 12 STEM Block 1