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nerve gas

(Encyclopedia)nerve gas, any of several poison gases intended for military use, e.g., tabun, sarin, soman, and VX. Nerve gases were first developed by Germany during World War II but were not used at that time. The...

nerve

(Encyclopedia)nerve: see nervous system.

poison gas

(Encyclopedia)poison gas, any of various gases sometimes used in warfare or riot control because of their poisonous or corrosive nature. These gases may be roughly grouped according to the portal of entry into the ...

gas

(Encyclopedia)gas, in physics, one of the three commonly recognized states of matter, the other two being solid and liquid. A substance in the gaseous state has neither definite shape nor definite volume. Like liqu...

coal gas

(Encyclopedia)coal gas, gas obtained in the destructive distillation of soft coal, as a byproduct in the preparation of coke. Its composition varies, but in general it is made up largely of hydrogen and methane wit...

ideal gas

(Encyclopedia)ideal gas: see gas laws; kinetic-molecular theory of gases. ...

inert gas

(Encyclopedia)inert gas or noble gas, any of the elements in Group 18 of the periodic table. In order of increasing atomic number they are: helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon. They are colorless, odorle...

gas, fuel

(Encyclopedia)gas, fuel, gaseous substance that burns in air and releases enough heat to be useful as a fuel, while also remaining sufficiently stable at ordinary temperatures to permit long-term storage without de...

gas laws

(Encyclopedia)gas laws, physical laws describing the behavior of a gas under various conditions of pressure, volume, and temperature. Experimental results indicate that all real gases behave in approximately the sa...

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