Gases have measurable physical and chemical properties.

This is just for fun. The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum has a wonderful site called "Sightings", at http://www.airspacemag.com/asm/web/site/sightings.html. To get the most out of it, you will need a QuickTime viewer on your computer. Many computers have this already. If you need to download it, you may do so at the site http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/. The Smithsonian site has movies and 3-D pictures from, among other things, the cockpit of the Goodyear blimp and various aircraft. It also has a glorious 360-degree picture of the surface of Mars. As a hand-in assignment, print out some of the still pictures from the site.

Pressure is a measure of force per unit area. There are many units of pressure in common use.

Unisys Corporation is one of many sources of current weather information. Their site, at http://weather.unisys.com/surface/contour.html has all kinds of weather information, including rainfall (radar plot), wind, temperature, and, for this exercise, pressure plots. Look at the current U.S. pressure plots at http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_con_pres.gif and the plot of pressure change, at http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_con_3pres.gif. Compare these with the radar plot of precipitation. What conclusions can you draw about the relationship of pressure, pressure change and precipitation? Look at past maps (for prior hours) as necessary.

Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures says that the total pressure of a mixture of gases is the sum of the individual pressures exerted by each gas in the mixture.

You're on your own here: In this section, we cited aviation and mountain climbing as two applications of Dalton's Law. Please surf the Internet and find two more current applications.

The volume, temperature, pressure and number of moles of a gas are all related. We describe this relationship with the Ideal Gas Equation. Boyle's and Charles' Law, and the combined gas law hold when one or more of these measures are constant.

We discuss "The Pump" sneaker by Reebok. But air is used in other sneaker products as well. Please go to the Reebok home site at http://www.reebok.com/. Click on the "Technology" link to find other applications. Please write a short essay on them. Check other shoe manufacturers (such as Nike, New Balance or Saucony) to find yet other such products.

One important reason that we study chemistry is because it relates so well to our daily lives.

We briefly discuss motor vehicle air bags in this section. Please visit the Scientific American site at http://www.sciam.com/askexpert/chemistry/chemistry19/chemistry19.html to reinforce this understanding and to see the short video of an air bag inflating. Go to the bottom of the page and click on the "Air Bags, Working Knowledge" link for additional information. Here they give some indication of the effectiveness of air bags. Your task is to surf the Internet to answer the following: Are air bags as effective at saving lives, or, rather, do they kill more people than they save?

The solubility of a gas in water goes down as the temperature of the water goes up.

A fun way to end the gas laws chapter is with a tour, so let's take one. Please go to http://www.cocacola.com. Feel free to skip the introduction. Click on "Virtual Plant Tour" and, after taking the ride, write a two page summary of the process, focusing on how gases are involved.