2 0 o C , pressure p 0 (in Pascals) and a mass density ρ 0 . Let the pressure 10 m above sea level be p 1 0 . Let the pressure 20 m above sea level be p 2 0 . What is
Consider air at sea level on the surface of the earth atp 0 − p 1 0 p 0 − p 2 0 − 2 ?
You may consider air to be entirely nitrogen for the purposes of this problem.
The acceleration of gravity is
−
9
.
8
m
/
s
2
.
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Can you show the calculations, to demonstrate why it's not 0?
Did you take out the average of the molar mass of oxygen and nitrogen? What was the value of R and g that you used? I used this method before and am still getting the answer as -0.001157.
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I honestly don't remember which value for molar mass I used while I did the calculation. In the solution above, I have used 2 9 g / m o l which is usually a good approximation. If you assume that the air is completely made up of nitrogen, you get a answer very close to the given answer. This is a past Brilliant problem and I remember that it was stated to assume molar mass of the air equal to 28 g/mol.
Sorry, I've just added in the assumptions I used in the question. It would be hard to get the exact answer otherwise.
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Ah, thanks Roger Kepstein!
I used it to be a mix of 80 % Nitrogen and 20% oxygen to get -0.00119. This was surely not a well phrased problem.
I wrote the correct answer 2 times and they told it wrong!!
The equation above is for an isothermic transformation only, isn’t?
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The question is basically based on the Barometric pressure formula .
It states that
p = p 0 exp ( − R T M g h )
where
p is the pressure at height h from sea level.
p 0 is the pressure at sea level.
M is the molar mass of air (I used 2 9 g / m o l )
R is the universal gas constant.
T is the temperature.
Let h = 1 0 m , then we can write,
p 1 0 = p 0 exp ( − R T M g h )
p 2 0 = p 0 exp ( − R T M g ( 2 h ) )
To make things easier, substitute exp ( − R T M g h ) = x , i.e p 1 0 = p 0 x and p 2 0 = p 0 x 2 . Plugging in the expression we have to evaluate,
p 0 − p 0 x p 0 − p 0 x 2 − 2 = ( 1 − x ) ( 1 − x ) ( 1 + x ) − 2 = x − 1
⇒ x − 1 = exp ( − R T M g h ) − 1 ≈ − 1 . 1 1 6 5 9 × 1 0 − 3
I used the following values:
M = 2 9 × 1 0 − 3 k g / m o l , g = 9 . 8 m / s 2 , h = 1 0 m , R = 8 . 3 1 4 J / ( m o l − K ) and T = 2 9 3 K .