Question

Sometimes leaving a bicycle in the sun on a hot day will cause a blowout. Why?

Short answer

Sometimes leaving a bicycle in the sun on a hot day will cause a blowout, because the pressure is increased too much, and a tire will blow.

Step-by-step solution

Definition of Amonton's law

Guillaume Edmonton, a French physicist, discovered Amonton's law in the late 1600s. If the volume of a gas remains constant, Amonton's law states that increasing the temperature of the gas raises its pressure.

Explaining

The ideal gas law, or Amonton's law, states that the ratio of pressure to temperature remains constant at constant volume and quantity of gas particles. This indicates that if the volume and amount remain constant, a change in temperature will result in a change in pressure.

The air in bicycle tires is constantly warmed up by the sun on a sunny day. As a result, the temperature rises, and the pressure rises as well, according to Edmonton's law. Of course, we might suppose that the volume of tires and the number of molecules are both constant.

A tire will explode if the pressure is increased too much, resulting in a blowout on a sunny day.