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Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 17:24:11 -0500
To: "Jimmy L. Stanford" <Medicdur@fl*.ne*>
From: Mike Rodriguez <mikey@ma*.co*>
Subject: Re: weight of air
Cc: Jesse Armantrout <armantrout@wo*.at*.ne*>,
At 12:43 PM 2/8/99 -0700, Jimmy L. Stanford wrote:

>    I don't know why a calibration manual would be so far off but STP is
>defined as 273.15K which is freezing temp of H2O (0C or 32F).  Pressure is
>1.013x10^5 Pa or 1 ATM.  This is the standard used in all Physics text.  I
>double checked it to make sure Snow & Shull Physics text page 374 and index
>(both agree on same values).  Hope this clears up some of the confusion.

Standard temperature and pressure is different in different
contexts.  There is no one true standard.  In aviation, for
example, standard temperature is 59F and standard pressure is
29.92" or 1013mb.  Same for meteorology, but in physics standard
temperature is 273.15K or 0C, in human physiology, it's 98.6F, etc.

A good standard has three qualities... it's easy to write,
it's easy to use as a baseline reference, and it's a convenient
magnitude in the context of the discipline in which it is used;
so, volcanologists use a different standard temperature
than biologists.  This is as it should be.

The weight you come up with for a given volume of air depends
on the context.  To be really precise, you have to indicate
the volume, temperature, pressure, and even humidity before
your calculated weight makes any sense.

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