Question

According to Boyle's law, PV = k as long the temperature and amount of gas remain constant.

In this equation, Is P the pressure inside the container or outside? I'm confused because I just saw a video on the internet that showed a bag of chips becoming inflated when it was taken to higher altitude. Now in this case the pressure inside the bag didn't change yet the volume changed (let's also assume temperature also remained constant as we moved up)

I know that the bag inflates because the atmospheric pressure decreased as we moved up so the air inside the the bag started exerting a greater force on the walls of the bag but again doesn't this mean pressure increased? It also means that the pressure was directly proportional to volume now??

Answer 1

According to Boyle's Law, the volume of a given amount of gas at constant temperature is inversely proportional to the pressure. This means that as the pressure on a gas increases, the volume decreases, and vice versa. The bag of chips expanding at higher altitude is an example of this phenomenon.

Step-by-step explanation:

According to Boyle's Law, the volume of a given amount of gas at constant temperature is inversely proportional to the pressure. According to Boyle's Law, the volume of a given amount of gas at constant temperature is inversely proportional to the pressure.

This means that as the pressure on a gas increases, the volume decreases, and vice versa. The bag of chips expanding at higher altitude is an example of this phenomenon. This means that as the pressure on a gas increases, the volume decreases, and as the pressure decreases, the volume increases.

In the case of the bag of chips expanding at higher altitude, the decrease in atmospheric pressure causes the gas inside the bag to expand to fill the larger volume.