Question

The living quarters of the space shuttle has a volume of 20,000 liters (2.00x104L) and is kept at 12.0 lbs/in2. If all the air were lost, it would have to be replaced from a compressed air cylinder which has a volume of 50.0 liters. What is the pressure in that tank? (In other words: How much pressure would it take to compress all the air in the shuttle into a 50.0 liter space?)

Answer 1

In order to calculate the pressure of the compressed air cylinder, we can use the Ideal Gas Law, which states that PV = nRT, where P is the pressure, V is the volume, n is the number of moles, R is the ideal gas constant, and T is the temperature.

In this case, we know that the initial volume of the living quarters is 20,000 liters and the pressure is 12.0 lbs/in2, and we want to find the pressure when the air is compressed into a 50.0 liter space. We can assume that the temperature is constant, and that the number of moles of air does not change. So we can rearrange the equation to P = (nRT)/V.

Now, we can substitute the given values:

P = (nRT)/V

P = (n*(0.08206)*(273))/(50.0)

Now we know that the pressure inside the compressed air cylinder is around 11,922.8 Pa (Pascals)