Recent content by Bennett Haselton

OK, so #3 above was the version of the question I was asking all along -- to get confirmation that under the exact conditions I specified, the work done by the gas is greater than atmospheric pressure times change in volume. Now, that raises a further question: If the the answer in case #3 is...

OK. You said it is not a correct statement that the work done by the gas is greater than 1atm*liter. I think I will probably not understand what you are saying unless I first understand exactly what is wrong with the following reasoning: 1. To find work, you integrate the force exerted over...

I'm not sure why you wrote "No". I said that we should use P(out) represents the atmospheric pressure outside of the piston. That corresponds to what you wrote in your first message in this thread.

Oh OK. So let's use P(out) to refer to the atmospheric pressure around the piston, regardless of what is considered the system. So, to save a lot of work here: Let's say I'm not actually interested in computing the answer, the total amount of work done by the gas. I just want to confirm that...

Before proceeding, can you clarify: Do you think the answer I got was correct, or do you think my answer was incorrect and you are trying to teach me to look at the problem differently? Re-reading through what you wrote in the Stack Exchange comments...

I would argue that if you are computing the work done by an expanding gas in a frictionless piston, in an irreversible expansion where the inner pressure is greater at all times than the (constant) outer pressure, that you should integrate the internal pressure over volume change, not multiply...