Comment by schoen
7 years ago
Was that more due to gas thermodynamics or mechanical friction?
I use bike pumps a lot, but only on bikes, so I've never experienced this.
7 years ago
Was that more due to gas thermodynamics or mechanical friction?
I use bike pumps a lot, but only on bikes, so I've never experienced this.
I assume it was mostly due to ideal gas law reasons. Pumping up a highish pressure truck tire (~65 psi IIRC) did take quite a long time and I was pretty exhausted by the end.
Compress a gas, it warms up. I imagine that's the large part of it. Go grab the cooling fins on a large electrically-driven compressor after it's been running a while. No, wait, don't do that if you like your fingerprints. The cooling fins aren't to cool the motor, they're to cool the compressor housing where the piston goes up and down to compress air.