The original presentation of boyle's law.
West, John B.
Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, La
Jolla, CA 92093-0623
APStracts 6:0254A, 1999.
The original presentation of what we know as Boyle_s Law has several
interesting features. First, the technical difficulties of the
experiment were considerable because Boyle used a glass tube full of
mercury nearly 2.5 m long and the large pressures sometimes shattered
the glass. Next, Boyle_s table of results contains extremely awkward
fractions such 10/13, 2/17, 13/19 and 18/23 which look very strange
to us today. This was because he calculated the pressure for a
certain volume of gas using simple multiplication and division
keeping the vulgar fractions. Boyle was not able to express the
numbers as decimals because this notation was not in common use at
the time. Finally his contention that pressure and volume were
inversely related depended on the reader comparing two sets of
numbers in adjacent columns to see how well they agreed. Today we
would plot the data, but again orthogonal graphs were not in general
use in 1662. When Boyle_s data are plotted using modern conventional
methods, they strongly support his hypothesis that the volume and
pressure of a gas are inversely related.
Received 10 March 1999; accepted in final form 2 June 1999.
APS Manuscript Number A181-9.
Article publication pending Journal of Applied Physiology.
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1999 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 14 June 1999