Never Tell an Engineer

A chemist can rarely suggest to an engineer that he may know something they don't. We purchased an analyzer to measure landfill gas concentrations continuously. I thought that the meter would only work well if the sampel inlet and outlets had pressure regulators since the meter operated under the Beer-Lambert law and constant pressure was essential. After months of trying to get the darned things to work accurately and reproducibly, we just discovered that the pressure makes a difference. It's nice to see engineers reinvent a wheel that was built well before I had to regurgitate the Beer-Lambertlaw in freshman chemistry 30 years ago.