Question

A gas tank holds 3625L of butane at 850mmHg. What is the volume of the butane at 25°C?

The answer is 4054L, by the way

Answer 1

Have a piece of your teacher; they have no business quoting a pressure with these units of measurement. The question is incomplete in any event.

Explanation:

Mercury has all but disappeared form the modern inorganic laboratory due to safety concerns. In the old days we used a mercury manometer to measure pressure. ONE atmosphere of pressure is known to support a column of mercury that is `760*mm` high....

If you tried to raise the column HIGHER than this, i.e. by putting GREATER than one atmosphere at ONE inlet of the manometer, I have no doubt that you would spray mercury all over the lab, where it would inhabit every nook, and every cranny, and give you a long and arduous clean up job that contract cleaners would not touch.

Just to humour the creature who set the question (who has undoubtedly NEVER used a manometer in his life)....we convert to kosher units...i.e. `P=(850*mm*Hg)/(760*mm*Hg*atm^-1)=1.12*atm`...these are the units with which the question SHOULD have been posed..and I would not tolerate such delinquency and sloppiness.