Are the gas laws compeletely true?

[voko]

No, your claims have gone far beyond that. There is a big difference between saying it is the only tool needed (which no one has claimed) and saying it can't be used at all (which is what you claimed).

I have checked all my posts in this thread and I do not believe I ever said it could not be used at all. I explicitly agreed that it could be used for gas residuals. But not for the whole system, and some other law is required to find out the amount of the gas residue.

It seems to me that whether one can say the ideal gas law applies or does not in this situation is a matter of opinion. I have expressed my opinion, others have expressed theirs. If I have offended anyone by any figure of speech, I apologize. I have to excuse myself from further participation in this debate.

 

[russ_watters]

I have checked all my posts in this thread and I do not believe I ever said it could not be used at all. I explicitly agreed that it could be used for gas residuals. But not for the whole system, and some other law is required to find out the amount of the gas residue.

You said it could not be used at all when dealing with a phase transition. That's the scenario we are discussing:
"...the ideal gas law cannot describe a phase transition at all."

You repeated several iterations of that statement. What you are missing is that the ideal gas law doesn't have to describe the transition itself to provide an insight into what happened in the transition.

It seems to me that whether one can say the ideal gas law applies or does not in this situation is a matter of opinion.

No, it really isn't. Utilizing a particular equation to solve a problem will either give a right answer or a wrong answer (to a certain precision). I provided examples of problems that apply here and you ignored them.

There is very little in science that is a matter of opinion.

 

[klimatos]

Most gas laws require that conditions of equilibrium exist (if not throughout the process, then at least at the beginning and end of it). Since the Earth's atmosphere in never even close to a condition of equilibrium, one must be very, very cautious in trying to apply laboratory-valid gas laws to the free atmosphere.

I have been out of town for the last week, and never imagined the fuss that this simple caution would produce. I was referring to non-equilibrium conditions in the free atmosphere--not in the laboratory. The image I had in mind (but, unfortunately did not specify) was the violent and changeable winds accompanied by condensation that can be found in thousands of thunderstorms that are occurring even as you read this post.

If you have an equation of state that accurately relates ambient pressures (including wind pressures) to temperatures (both at the surface of the condensing droplet and in the air between) that is valid under these circumstances, I would dearly love to see it.

I am not unfamiliar with the ordinary gas laws (Boyle's Law, Charles Law, etc.), which is what I had in mind when I wrote the post. I have just reviewed them, and--sure enough--most of them require conditions of equilibrium to be valid.

What did I say that was so contentious?

 

[Chestermiller]

I have been out of town for the last week, and never imagined the fuss that this simple caution would produce. I was referring to non-equilibrium conditions in the free atmosphere--not in the laboratory. The image I had in mind (but, unfortunately did not specify) was the violent and changeable winds accompanied by condensation that can be found in thousands of thunderstorms that are occurring even as you read this post.

If you have an equation of state that accurately relates ambient pressures (including wind pressures) to temperatures (both at the surface of the condensing droplet and in the air between) that is valid under these circumstances, I would dearly love to see it.

I am not unfamiliar with the ordinary gas laws (Boyle's Law, Charles Law, etc.), which is what I had in mind when I wrote the post. I have just reviewed them, and--sure enough--most of them require conditions of equilibrium to be valid.

What did I say that was so contentious?

See the following reference:
Microphysics of Clouds and Precipitation (Atmospheric and Oceanographic Sciences Library) Paperback
by H.R. Pruppacher (Author) , J.D. Klett (Author)