David Thornburg's Story
05/28/2012
In high school we were taught about Gay-Lussac\'s law relating temperature to gas pressure in a closed container. To check this out, a friend and I held a carbon dioxide cylinder (the kind used to make sparkling water)in a vise while heating it with a torch. There was a sudden explosion and the cylinder had blown out of the vise, through the wall of my friend\'s house, and stuck in a tree in his back yard. No one hurt, and I\'ve never forgotten this aspect of the Gas Law since.