Boyle's law

“According to Boyle’s law, if the temperature doesn’t change, pressure and volume are inversely correlated, which means that pressure changes in the environment can cause expansion or contraction of air-space cavities in the body.”

There are two laws relating to gases that can be used here to work out the behaviour of the air mix of argon and oxygen: Charles’ Law to add the components up, and Boyle’s Law to show what happens when the pressure increases.

Many letters to Katherine provide a window on his life in Dorset, and in a letter to another friend he mentions seeing an air gun which could use the force of compressed air to fire a lead ball capable of killing a man at a distance of thirty paces—an observation which clearly set him thinking along the lines that were to lead to his discovery of Boyle’s law.

Already in 1662, however, Boyle was careful to acknowledge that a number of people had contributed to the formulation of Boyle’s law.

If one drew up a list of all the people known to have performed barometer experiments between Torricelli in 1643 and the discovery of Boyle’s law in 1662, it would reach a hundred names without too much difficulty.