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If you were to take a balloon, and inside, put vinegar and baking soda then tied the balloon quickly, what would happen? For a while, the balloon would expand with gas(creation of space), and continue to expand for as long as the chemical reaction takes place. Once the reaction ends, and, over time, the gas will dissipate and you will be left with the same basic ingredients you started with, a balloon and a goopy mess of vinegar-baking soda.
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Nothing is being created or destroyed in the experiment above. From a chemical standpoint the original ingredients, vinegar and baking soda each had a certain area due to their phase (one a solid, the other a liquid) The gas created from the reaction takes up space in the balloon and then the balloon basically leaks (an ideal balloon would not). The balloon expands in real space (i.e. it doesn't create space, it merely fills it). Most importantly however is the fact that the original ingredients are not vinegar/baking soda goop, they are now water and a sodium acetate, in other words the reaction released energy that was stored in the bonds of the vinegar and baking soda. This ex nihilo nothing was created in the chemical reaction. Instead bonds rearranged in a fashion that stabilized already destabilized matter. In essence the reaction was meant to happen the moment that energy allowed the creation of the acid and the base rendering them unstable and reactive. Even at our understanding of the atomic model, chemistry will predict this relationship including the approximation of the behavior of the released gas. Additionally, this example helps support the MM in that current theory does not correctly interpret the gas laws that we would use to describe the CO2 in the balloon.
Upon further thought, I am curious if the distortion observed between the ideal gas law pv=nRT and the Real Gas derivations is a product of gravitational shielding in the gas causing inaccurate interpretations of the actual mass present. Hmm. In essence, we cannot make correct predictions about the behaviors of gas at our normal temperatures and pressures. If there are thermodynamical implications to this problem, perhaps the MM can assist. Tom?
