Knowledge Bank

“An infrared spectrophone for study of vibrational relaxation was developed and applied to the measurement of relaxation in carbon monoxide. CO was chosen for its theoretically predicted behaviour. Application of the $Schwartz-Slawsky-Herzfeld1$ theory predicts a very long lifetime for pure CO, with a high dependence on reduced collision mass, low mass giving shorter lifetime. Special interest was directed toward $CO-H2$ mixture, because of the predicted effect of $H2$ and the fact that $H2$ is an impurity in commercial CO. The lifetimes at room temperature for the collision $CO+$M, extrapolated to one atmosphere pressure of M. varied from 1.6 microseconds for $M=H2$ to 190 microseconds for $M=CO$.”