In Our Time: Science cover image

Kinetic Theory

In Our Time: Science

CHAPTER

The Origins of the Spring of the Air

Newton wanted to find an explanation for what Boil referred to as the spring of the air. If you operate a bicycle pump, and you push the arm on the hand, it feels like you're compressing a spring. Newton actually took this a little bit further by saying that each of the individual atoms are going to repel each other with a force that varies with distance. And then that was able to explain Boil's law. It was a theory, it was a wrong theory, but it was a widely accepted theory at the time.

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