Robert Boyle .

Robert Boyle was born in 1627 in Ireland. His mother died when he was three, and his father left him when he was twelve. He traveled and studied throughout Europe, and in 1644 he returned to Ireland with an enormous interest in science, so he built a lab. His assistant in 1655 when he moved to Oxford was Robert Hooke, and together they did many experiments and made many inventions. Robert Boyle was the father of chemistry, he coined the term analysis, and was the first scientist to collect a sample of gas. Luckily, since we know that this is just the highlight of everyone's day, that leaves us with only three more really important things that Robert Boyle did. The first really important thing was the Litmus Test. Boyle's invention helps us distinguish acids from bases. He did this by experimenting with plant juice. When he placed an acid in a jar with a purple plant juice, it would make a red solution. When he placed a base in a jar with the same purple plant juice, it would make a bluish green solution. We use the same process today, except we use litmus paper instead of plant juice. The second really important thing that Boyle did was his invention of the air pump. This is Boyle's drawing and version of his air pump, and this is the modern version. While all of this looks and sounds confusing, it's just an oxygenless space, or a vacuum, just like outer space. With his invention, Boyle discovered that flames cannot burn without oxygen, and that sounds can't travel without it either, because the waves will have nothing to bounce off of. The third really important thing that Boyle did was the discovery of Boyle's Law. Boyle is most famous for this discovery, and it states that when the volume of gas is decreased, the pressure of the gas increases proportionally. Boyle proved this in his experiment with a J-shaped tube and some mercury. The same amount of oxygen was in both tubes, and mercury was added to both tubes, but more mercury was put into the second tube. Because more mercury was in the second tube, there was more pressure in the tube, and the volume, or the space that the oxygen took up, is much less space than the tube with less pressure and less mercury. Boyle's Law applies to us today, and is really important for scuba divers. Many scuba divers know that it is really important to equalize your ears early and often as you're descending on your scuba trip. This is done by plugging your nose and blowing out slightly. Because the oxygen in your middle ear is trapped, the pressure keeps increasing the farther and farther you dive down. You have to equalize the pressure so that the pressure releases and that you don't hurt your ears. That's why it hurts sometimes when you go really deep in a pool. Your lungs are the same way when you dive. They can hold much more oxygen under the water because the oxygen is being compressed so much. Luckily, equalizing for this is simple. All you have to do is make sure you are breathing the whole time you are under the sea. This next clip is an example of our lungs and the oxygen they can hold while diving. At the surface, the bucket started filled with air, and then the deeper they got, the more and more the air got compressed. At 33 feet, we can see that the bucket is half full of air when it was originally full of air at the surface. It's still the same amount of gas, it's just compressed more because there's more pressure on it. As the bucket rises back to the surface, the pressure decreases so the volume of the gas increases, until finally at the surface, the air is back into the full bucket again.