tear gas

Any of a group of substances, most often synthetic organic halogen compounds, that irritate the mucous membranes of the eyes, causing a stinging sensation and tears. They may also irritate the upper respiratory tract, causing coughing, choking, and general debility. Tear gas was first used in warfare in World War I, but since its effects are short-lasting and rarely disabling, it came into use by law-enforcement agencies as a means of dispersing mobs, disabling rioters, and flushing out armed suspects without the use of deadly force.

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Gas whose physical behaviour conforms to the general gas law, which states that for a given quantity of gas, the product of the volume math.V and pressure math.P is proportional to the absolute temperature math.T, or math.Pmath.V = math.kmath.T, where math.k is a constant. A perfect gas is assumed to consist of a large number of molecules in random motion, which obey Newton's laws of motion. Their volume is assumed to be negligibly small, and no forces are presumed to act on the molecules except during momentary collisions. Though no gas has these properties, real gases at sufficiently high temperatures and low pressures can be described this way.

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Any of the seven chemical elements that make up the rightmost group of the periodic table as usually arranged: helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, radon, and element 118. All are colourless, odourless, and nonflammable and, except for element 118, occur in tiny amounts in the atmosphere (though helium is the most plentiful element in the universe after hydrogen). Their stable electronic configurations, with no unpaired electrons to share, make them extremely unreactive—hence “noble” (i.e., aloof) or inert—though krypton, xenon, and radon, with outer electrons held less firmly, can form compounds (mainly with fluorine). These gases absorb and give off electromagnetic radiation in a much less complex way than other substances, a property exploited in their use in fluorescent lighting devices and discharge lamps. They glow with a characteristic colour when confined in a transparent container at low pressure with an electric current passing through it. Their very low boiling and melting points make them useful as refrigerants for low-temperature research (see cryogenics).

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Colourless, highly flammable gaseous hydrocarbon consisting primarily of methane and ethane. It may also contain heavier hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen, helium, and argon. It commonly occurs in association with crude oil (see petroleum). Natural gas is extracted from wells drilled into the Earth. Some natural gas can be used as it comes from the well, without any refining, but most requires processing. It is transported either in its natural gaseous state by pipeline or, after liquefaction by cooling, by tankers. Liquefied natural gas occupies only about 1/600 of the volume of the gas. It has grown steadily as a source of energy since the 1930s.

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Volatile material (mostly swallowed air, partly digestive by-products) in the digestive tract, which normally contains 150–500 cc of gas. Air in the stomach is either belched out or passed to the intestines. Some of its oxygen is absorbed into the blood along the way. Carbon dioxide produced by digestion is added. Nitrogen, the major component, is inert and usually passed on. Obstructions in the small intestine can trap gas in distended pockets, causing severe pain. In the large intestine, bacterial fermentation products are added—mostly hydrogen but also methane, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and sulfur-containing mercaptans. Excess gas in the colon is eventually expelled from the body.

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Type of chromatography with a gas mixture as the mobile phase. In a packed column, the packing or solid support (held in a tube) serves as the stationary phase (vapour-phase chromatography, or VPC) or is coated with a liquid stationary phase (gas-liquid chromatography, or GLC). In capillary columns, the stationary phase coats the walls of small-diameter tubes. The sample of gas or volatile liquid to be analyzed is injected into the inlet; its components move through with a carrier gas (usually hydrogen, helium, or argon) at rates influenced by their degree of interaction with the stationary phase. The temperature, nature of the stationary phase, and column length can be varied to improve separation. The gas stream issuing from the column's end may pass through a thermal conductivity detector or a flame ionization detector, where its properties are compared with those of known reference substances. GC is used to measure air pollutants, essential oils, gases or alcohol in blood, and composition of industrial process streams.

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One of the three fundamental states of matter, in which matter has no definite shape, is very fluid, and has a density about 0.1percnt that of liquids. Gas is very compressible but tends to expand indefinitely, and it fills any container. A small change in temperature or pressure produces a substantial change in its volume; these relationships are expressed as equations in the gas laws. The kinetic theory of gases, developed in the 19th century, describes gases as assemblages of tiny particles (atoms or molecules) in constant motion and contributed much to an understanding of their behaviour. The term gas can also mean gasoline, natural gas, or the anesthetic nitrous oxide. Seealso solid.

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Gaseous cloud from which, in the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system, the Sun and planets formed by condensation. In 1755 Immanuel Kant suggested that a nebula gradually pulled together by its own gravity developed into the Sun and planets. Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace, in 1796 proposed a similar model, in which a rotating and contracting cloud of gas—the young Sun—shed concentric rings of matter that condensed into the planets. But James Clerk Maxwell showed that, if all the matter in the known planets had once been distributed this way, shearing forces would have prevented such condensation. Another objection was that the Sun has less angular momentum than the theory seems to require. In the early 20th century most astronomers preferred the collision theory: that the planets formed as a result of a close approach to the Sun by another star. Eventually, however, stronger objections were mounted to the collision theory than to the nebular hypothesis, and a modified version of the latter—in which a rotating disk of matter gave rise to the planets through successively larger agglomerations, from dust grains through planetesimals and protoplanets—became the prevailing theory of the solar system's origin.

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Any of a class of bright nebulae that may somewhat resemble planets when viewed through a small telescope but are, in fact, expanding shells of luminous gas around dying stars. A planetary nebula is the outer envelope shed by a red giant star not massive enough to become a supernova. Instead, the star's intensely hot core becomes exposed (see white dwarf star) and ionizes the surrounding shell of gas, which is expanding at tens of miles per second.

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Any of various tenuous clouds of gas and dust in interstellar space. Nebulae constitute only a small percentage of a galaxy's mass. Dark nebulae (e.g., the Coalsack) are very dense, cold molecular clouds that appear as large, obscure, irregularly shaped areas in the sky. Bright nebulae (e.g., the Crab Nebula, planetary nebula) appear as faintly luminous, glowing surfaces; they emit their own light or reflect that of stars near them. The term nebula also formerly referred to galaxies outside the Milky Way Galaxy.

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Bright nebula, faintly visible to the unaided eye in the sword of the hunter's figure in the constellation Orion. About 1,500 light-years from Earth, it contains hundreds of very hot young stars clustered about a group of four massive stars known as the Trapezium. Radiation primarily from these four stars excites the nebula to glow. Discovered in the early 17th century, it was the first nebula to be photographed (1880).

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Bright nebula in the constellation Taurus, about 5,000 light-years from Earth. Roughly 12 light-years in diameter, it is the remnant of a supernova, first observed by Chinese and other astronomers in 1054, that was visible in daylight for 23 days and at night for almost two years. Identified as a nebula circa 1731, it was named (for its form) in the mid-19th century. In 1921 it was discovered to be still expanding; the present rate is about 700 mi/second (1,100 km/second). The Crab is one of the few astronomical objects from which electromagnetic radiation has been detected over the entire measurable spectrum. In the late 1960s a pulsar, thought to be the collapsed remnant star of the supernova, was found near its centre.

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