Question

for a deep dive, a scuba diver uses a mixture of helium and oxygen with a pressure of 8.00 atm. if the oxygen has a partial pressure of 1280 mmhg, what is the partial pressure of the helium? (volume and temperature are constant.)

Answer 1

Using Dalton's law of partial pressures, the partial pressure of helium can be calculated by subtracting the partial pressure of oxygen from the total gas mixture pressure, resulting in a helium partial pressure of 6.3158 atm.

Step-by-step explanation:

Calculation of Helium Partial Pressure

To find the partial pressure of helium in a scuba diver's air mixture, we can use Dalton's law of partial pressures, which states that the total pressure of a gas mixture is the sum of the partial pressures of each individual gas component.

The total pressure of the gas mixture is given as 8.00 atm. The pressure of oxygen is given as 1280 mmHg. First, we need to convert the oxygen pressure to atmospheres since pressures must be in the same units when applying Dalton's law:

1280 mmHg × (1 atm/760 mmHg) = 1.6842 atm (oxygen partial pressure)

To find the partial pressure of helium, we subtract the partial pressure of oxygen from the total pressure:

8.00 atm (total pressure) - 1.6842 atm (oxygen partial pressure) = 6.3158 atm (helium partial pressure)