Basic Science Clinic by Steve Morgan & Sophie Connolly

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

Carl Sagan

Welcome to Basic Science Clinic Raw Science episode 4. We are close to embarking on the descent down the oxygen cascade, en route we will examine the key contributors to these stepwise decrements in oxygen partial pressure that coax the gas down to the level of the mitochondria. To grasp the concepts essential to the physiology of this pathway you need to understand the fundamentals of gas behaviour, enter the gas laws.

In this pod we will cover:

Boyle's, Charles', Guy-lussac's laws

Avogadro's number

Dalton's and Henry's laws

Saturated vapour pressure & boiling point

The concept of in vivo partial pressures

Raw Science Factoids

Increasing ambient pressure from 1 to 2 atm will decrease the volume of 1L water by

At an oceanic depth of 40m an FiO2 0.21 results in a PiO2 > 400 mmHg and FiO2 1.0 gives PiO2 > 2000 mmHg, resulting in tissue hyperoxia.

Opening a soda can drops the pressure of the CO2 gas above the liquid that has set up an equilibrium in accordance with Henry's law. This results in CO2 rushing out of solution to reach a new equilibrium with ambient, atmospheric CO2 partial pressure.