The Gas Laws Are Useful

The gas laws include the Boyle's law, Charles law and Gay-Lussac's law. There are quite a lot of advantages as to having an understanding of the gas laws since they are part of our every day life and that as we understand the function and how they work, we can easily understand how the inventions in life are being made. One of the practical application of the gas I have chosen to explore and understand about was the airbag that are equipped inside cars to keep the safety of the passengers at a high rate.

Where are airbags used?

Inside modern cars, they are usually equipped with safety facilities such as the airbag, which is designed to react to sudden impacts. This design is able to protect passengers inside the car, because there are possibilities that they could be thrown against the steering wheel or other parts of the car during an accident even if they were wearing seatbelts.

Airbags are usually used along with the seatbelts, although it was planned that the invention of airbag would be able to replace the seatbelts but however it is no longer marketed and that airbags work to protect the passengers inside a car during a collision to remain an upright position only.

How are airbags being functioned?

The main purpose that airbags are used and equipped inside a car for safety is due to its attempt to decrease the momentum of drivers or passengers within a car to zero. In order to stop the injury, the momentum must be decreased and stop within 0.04 seconds and that the airbag must begin to deflate before the body is thrown against it.

Inflation and deflation

Within an airbag, there are 3 main components that must work together in order to function effectively, they include the bag, the sensor and the inflation system.

In order for an airbag to function effectively, the airbag's sensor determines whether the airbag is needed in the situation and inside it contains a steel ball that is attached to a stiff spring, when the car suddenly decelerates, the spring would release the ball and it would trigger the electrical circuit, which would result in an explosive burn and would ignite a pellet of sodium azide, it generates a massive amount of harmless gas that would blood the nylon airbag with nitrogen gas at a velocity of 150 to 250 miles per hour.

The chemicals inside an airbag includes sodium azide(NaN3), potassium nitrate(KNO3) and silicon dioxide (SiO2). Hot discharges of the nitrogen gas would inflate the bag at the speed of approximately 200 mph and that immediately after the inflation, the gas molecules would escape through vents, the tiny holes in the airbag, which would result in the deflation of the bag, while the bag would move in the same direction as the body was thrown against it, which that the body would not hit the airbag while