Ideal Gas: Silent But Deadly

That chortling you heard from a few cubicles over? That was me, reading The Gas Phase chapter in my MCAT Chemistry Review Book.

let it all out, mr. president

It's true: I may be an accomplished poet/scientist. I may pay bills a week in advance. I may color-code my planner. I may only date men I'd want to marry. I may listen to Gregorian Chants. BUT (or, as I prefer, "AND") I consider fart jokes to be the crème de la crème of humor. And here, in my MCAT book, are so many gas jokes just waiting to squelch to the surface. 

The chapter begins with a description of The Gaseous Phase, which previously I thought of only as the rather fruitful hour after one eats a burrito. 

don't worry, stomach, it's just a phase

Apparently, however, there a few different types of gaseous phases, including Ideal and Non-Ideal. (Thesis title: "A Damaging Dichotomy of Beauty: An Argument for Unidealizing The Gaseous Male Gaze.") An Ideal Gas, I have discovered, is like an Ideal Woman in that they both occupy no volume.

. . .except in certain places, obviously

Assuming a gas doesn't act like, well, a gas, allows us to call it Ideal. Molecules of an Ideal Gas have no intermolecular forces and therefore interact about as much as New Yorkers on the subway (Motto: Ignore Everything). Once one has set these certain parameters of behavior i.e. made shit up, we can proceed to understand how that gas would act if it were Ideal, which it isn't, so, really, what's the point? It was then that I ripped up my notecards and asked my Ideal Woman to bring me a sandwich.

The golden equation for this chapter, reincarnated in every possible way over a series of 10 pages, is PV=nRT. The MCAT book suggests that I remember the variables of this Ideal Gas law by "sounding it out: 'piv-nert.'" (A "Pivnert" presumably being an adolescent pervert who has not yet reached his prime.) This mnemonic, I regret to say, is not the most useless one the book has offered so far. No, the Horrible Mnemonic Winner of the Chem Review book is probably the device offered to help me remember Avogadro's number: I should recall that Mole Day is celebrated on 6:02 on October 23.


Too bad all I can think of when I hear the words "Mole Day" is how our well-meaning high school chemistry teacher had our class sew moles from a cloth pattern, and how every day for weeks afterwards we would arrive to find the fabric animals placed, by boys who shall remain nameless, into increasingly creative sexual positions. 

close, but no post-coital cigar

Thankfully for the people studying nearby me this afternoon, the chapter on Gaseous States ended as quickly as it arrived. But not before the MCAT Book made its final, hilarious declaration: "Expect that the MCAT will treat gases with the level of attention that is appropriate to their importance in our physical lives." My juvenile sense of humor combined with my intimate knowledge of gastrointestinal activity (thanks, Crohn's disease) puts me smack dab, nail-on-the-head, miles away from the center of this Venn Diagram:

lucky legolas

If the MCAT actually treated gases with an attention "appropriate to it's importance in my life," the entire exam would be fart-based. And that, my friends, would truly separate the doctors from the pre-meds.