PRESENTATION OUTLINE
For those of you who watched the Superbowl or have heard about the crazed topic regarding the New England Patriots football team, then you know that the footballs used by The Patriots were deflated. But.. were they deflated on purpose?
Using a combination of Boyle's and Charles' laws, we conducted an experiment proving how the footballs used by the Patriots could have been unintentionally deflated.
The Ideal Gas Law: PV = nRT
Where p is the pressure of the football, v is the volume of the football, n is the number of moles of gas inside the football, R is the ideal gas constant and T is the temperature of the football.
In words this equation simply says the pressure and volume of the football is equal to the number of moles and ideal gas constant in the ball multiplied by the temperature.
So, by changing the amounts of some of the variables, it will completely change the result. For example, by decreasing the temperature of the ball you will decrease the pressure of it as well.
In conclusion, since the Patriots aired up their footballs in a warmer location, exposing the footballs to a colder temperature caused the volume to decrease, thus deflating them somewhat less than intended.
REAL WORLD APPLICATIONs:
1. Balloons: Using the Ideal Gas Law, balloons continue to ascend In the air when let go. These balloons begin to slow down as the temperature gets colder due to altitude changes. The balloon will eventually fall back down to earth due to lack of support.
2. The plunger on a turkey syringe thermometer pops out when the turkey is done. This happens due to the volume of the air trapped under the plunger increases when the temperature inside the turkey increases as well.
3. Hot Air Balloons: As the gas in the hot air balloon is heated (by fire), the volume of the hot air balloon will increase. Therefore allowing it to fly.
