Vacuum: How to Make a Meaningless Paper

Vacuum: How to Make a Meaningless Paper

In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure.[1] The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in practice. Physicists often discuss ideal test results that would occur in a perfect vacuum, which they simply call "vacuum" or "free space", and use the term partial vacuum to refer to real vacuum. The Latin term in vacuo is also used to describe an object as being in what would otherwise be a vacuum.

The quality of a vacuum refers to how closely it approaches a perfect vacuum. Other things equal, lower gas pressure means higher-quality vacuum. For example, a typical vacuum cleaner produces enough suction to reduce air pressure by around 20%.[2] Much higher-quality vacuums are possible. Ultra-high vacuum chambers, common in chemistry, physics, and engineering, operate below one trillionth (10?12) of atmospheric pressure, and can reach ?100 particles/cm3.[3] Outer space is an even higher-quality vacuum, with the equivalent of just a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter on average.[4] However, even if every single atom and particle could be removed from a volume, it would still not be "empty" due to vacuum fluctuations,