User:Cringe/The Cringe Basic Basics Of Atmospherics
In this page, I will be teaching thee the bare fundamentals, explaining terms and the whatnot, assuming you know practically nothing about Atmospherics.
The Ideal Gas Law
P*V=n*R*T. This law governs everything atmospheric in SS13. Expanding it, it means (Pressure * Volume) = (Moles * Ideal_Gas_Constant * Temperature). Below will explain the items within it first.
Pressure
How hard something presses over an area, such as gas pressing against its container. In SS13, we use kPa (kiloPascals) to measure pressure. The higher the pressure, the harder the gas presses against its container or wants to expand outwards. A high pressure gas on a turf will always flow to a low pressure turf if there is nothing blocking it.
Volume
How much space there is. In SS13, we measure this using the Litre (or Liter). Also to note, in SS13, the volume of a container will never change from it's value. Not much else to explain here that I can think of.
Moles (or Mols)
Not moles the animal, but instead a unit of measurement of "Stuff". In SS13, you can use it as a generic unit of measurement. Such as one would say 1 litre of water, you can say 1 mol (or mole) of oxygen.
Ideal Gas Constant
A scaling value. This lets us use various units for the Ideal Gas Law. For our combination of kiloPascals, Litres, Mols, and Kelvin, we use the the value of 8.314 (L*kPa/(K * Mol)) (The units cancel all out, ain't that neat? Doesn't matter for you though, so ignore it, ain't on any quiz). Since this is a constant, you can ignore it for pretty much all cases.
Temperature
How HOT it is, or how fast its wee particles are moving about. In SS13, we use Kelvin, a measurement of absolute temperature. This merely means that 0 Kelvin (notice it's not in degrees!) is absolute zero. To convert from Celsius to Kelvin, add 273.15 from the temperature. A gas that is hotter will always make a colder gas touching it hotter, and vice versa.
Back to the law
This law shows the relationships between all these measurements. Let's rearrange it around a bit to see em! Only the important ones though.
P = n*R*T / V
The most used relationship here! As Moles (amount of stuff) and Temperature rise, the Pressure increases. For the first cases, there's more stuff that's doing the pressing, so there's more Pressure. For the second case, that stuff is moving faster, so it impacts harder, pressing harder. As Volume decreases, Pressure increases, since the stuff in the container has less space to move about it, it gets forced closer together, and therefore hits the container more often. (Boyle's law!)
R = P*V / n*T
Since the Ideal Gas constant in SS13 remains, well, constant, the other measurements must change to equal this value. If Temperature increases, Pressure must rise as well. If there is more stuff, Temperature must drop to accommodate it if you wish to keep the same Pressure.
Things Not Ideal Gas Law
This section will explain the important topics that are not Ideal Gas Law related.
Heat
A concept related to temperature, but is not equal to it. This one may be a bit difficult to understand, but it's important! Heat is energy. Energy is the capacity to do work. The more energy you have, the more you can Do. To explain energy, let us make a Good-Enough analogy. You have a weight. It is lifted by some amount, and weighs some amount. The heavier it is, and the higher it is, the more it will do when we let go. It Doing stuff is Work. And the amount of Work it can Do is Energy. Since heat is energy, the analogy for heaviness is Heat Capacity, and the analogy for how high it is is Temperature. Heat Capacity is how much Energy is needed to make it go 1 Unit (Kelvin) Higher. In SS13, we use Joules to measure heat, and Joules / Kelvin for Heat Capacity. A gas with a high heat capacity has more Heat per Kelvin (More Energy per Unit of Height) compared to a low one. A gas with more heat may not have a higher temperature. But it may still do More Stuff (Ex: Heavy weight at 0.1 meters, vs Pebble at 1 meter). Hopefully this explains it.