Abstract
The ideal gas law correlates pressure, volume, and temperature of an ideal gas with one another. As discussed in this chapter, the moka coffee maker works according to this law and popcorn is also made thanks to it; the same physical principle allows to calculate the reserve of oxygen in a cylinder based on the pressure inside it; similarly, volume and pressure of a tracheal tube cuff are affected by both temperature and altitude and, accordingly, adjustments of cuff inflation may be needed (at least theoretically) during intraoperative deep hypothermia or helicopter transportation of intubated patients in order to avoid leakage or tracheal injury, respectively; finally, divers must be very familiar with the behavior of gases to avoid decompression illness, and pressure and volume changes similar to those causing this potentially severe disease during a dive may also be responsible for earache (or other more embarrassing troubles) during an airplane flight.
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Pisano, A. (2021). Coffee, Popcorn, and Oxygen Cylinders: The Ideal Gas Law. In: Physics for Anesthesiologists and Intensivists. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72047-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72047-6_2
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