Salty Thumb wrote:
snip

If you work out Van der Waal's equation:
http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genche...eviation5.html

at 1 atm and 20C, I get

02 1 mol / 2.74 L
N2 1 mol / 2.74 L
CO 1 mol / 2.73 L
CO2 1 mol / 2.49 L

making CO2 the most dense (unless I solved the equation wrong which is
entirely likely: v^3 - bv^2 = av - ab - RT = 0).

The difference between CO and O2 doesn't seem remarkable enough to be
significant, but I guess at greater concentrations it'd be workable. I
think you'd be more likely to kill yourself than the rat, though.

[I'm not a chemist or physicist, so all this could a bunch of hokey.]
(rec.gardens)

I think there's something wrong with those numbers. 1 mole of
(ideal) gas occupies 22.4 L @ STP. Your numbers should vary slightly.

Kelly's already done a bang-up job of explaining why you need to
bring mass back into the picture.

R,
Tom Q.