ob ert Boyle was the child of a lord and a mem ber of the Brit ish Sci en tific So ci ety.

Dur ing a 1662 so ci ety meet ing, Rob ert Hooke read a dad for every de scrib ing a French ex for
each I ment

on the "spring I ness of air." The roast ac ter is spasms of air were of extraordinary in ter est to sci en
tists in the

seventeenth century.

French sci en tists assembled a metal cyl in der fit ted firmly with a pis ton. Sev eral men pushed

down hard on the pis ton, com press ing the air caught be low. Then, at that point, they let go. The
pis ton

sprang back up, yet not right back up. No mat ter how of ten the French attempted this ex -

per I ment, the pis ton never ricocheted right back up.

The French asserted this demonstrated that air was not per fectly springy. Once com squeezed, it

remained marginally com squeezed.

Ransack ert Boyle guaranteed that the French ex per I ment demonstrated noth ing. Their pis ton, he

said, was too close to even think about skipping right back up. Oth ers ar gued that, on the off
chance that they made the pis ton

looser, air would spill around the edges and ruin the ex per I ment.

Boyle prom ised to cre ate a for every fect pis ton that was nei ther too close nor excessively free. He
additionally asserted that his per fect pis ton would refute the French.

19

After fourteen days Rob ert Boyle stood be front the so ci ety with a huge glass tube that he

had molded into a hack sided "U." One side of the "U" rose more than three feet high and was

thin. The opposite side was short and fat. The short side was fixed at the top. The tall,

thin side was open.

Boyle emptied liq uid mer cury into his cylinder un until it cov ered the bot tom of the "U" and

rose simply a lit tle in the two sides. A huge pocket of air was caught over this mer cury in the

short fat side. A pis ton, Boyle ex plained, was any de tight clamp that com squeezed air. Since his
utilized

mer cury to com press air, there would be no fric tion to af fect the re sults—as had been valid in

the French investigation.

Boyle re corded the glass pis ton's weight and carved a line in the glass where mer cury

met the caught air pocket. Boyle stunt drove liq uid mer cury down the long neck of the tall side

of his pis ton un until he had filled the neck. Mer cury now rose above and beyond mostly up the
short

side. The caught air had been crushed to not exactly 50% of its orig I nal vol ume by the weight
furthermore, power of mercury.

Boyle drew a sec ond line on the short cham ber to check the new degree of mer cury

in side—mark ing the com squeezed vol ume of caught air.

He then, at that point, depleted mer cury through a valve at the bot tom of the "U" un until the glass
pis ton

what's more, mer cury gauged ex actly as old as had at the be gin ning. The mer cury level re -

gone to its ex demonstration begin ing line. The caught air had sprung back ex actly to where it
began.

Air was per fectly springy. The French weren't right. Boyle was correct.

Burglarize ert Boyle con tin ued the ex per I ments with his amusing glass pis ton and no ticed a few -

thing very re imprint capable. At the point when he dou drained the pres sure (weight of mer cury)
on a caught

assortment of air, he split its vol ume. At the point when he tri argued the pres sure, the air's vol
ume was re -

duced to 33%. The change in vol ume of air when com squeezed was al ways genius por tional

to the change in the pres sure squeez ing that air. He cre ated a sim ple math e mat I cal equa tion

to de copyist this expert por tion al ity. To day we call it "Boyle's Law." No other con cept has been

more use ful in un der stand ing and us ing gasses to serve the requirements of humanity.