The Fallacious Determination of the Specific Heats of Gases by the Explosion Method

Abstract

THE recent gales suggest how fortunate a thing it is that the rate of motion of gas in an equilibration of pressure is not that of sound, which is of the order of 740 miles per hour. The phrase, common among students of gas-explosion phenomena, that ‘pressure-equilibrium is attained at the speed of sound’ has, indeed, on analysis, no meaning whatever; the rate at which gas moves over a point is a function of the pressure-gradient at that point.