Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life

Up on the high plateau, hot desert air had cooled, become more dense, and slithered downslope, just like the winds that faced Scott in Antarctica.

The centre of Antarctica is a high, dry plateau. It is covered in deep ice, but it hardly ever snows.

It says that for a fixed mass of gas the pressure is inversely proportional to the volume (if you double the pressure, you halve the volume), the temperature is proportional to the pressure (if you double the temperature, you double the pressure) and the volume is proportional to the temperature, at fixed pressure. It doesn’t matter what the gas is

If you double the temperature you still double the volume (if you keep the pressure constant).

Gas temperature is just a way of expressing how much movement energy the molecules have on average, but each individual molecule is constantly speeding up and slowing down, exchanging its energy with the others as they collide.

Sperm whales are never breathing from their lungs when they make these deep dives. It’s far too dangerous.

A sperm whale has twice as much haemoglobin as a human, and about ten times as much myoglobin (the protein used to store energy in the muscles).

alveoli, the delicate part of the lungs where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged into and out of the blood,

This is Boyle’s Law, and it says that gas pressure is inversely proportional to volume.