Here is a video about partial pressures (15min): Partial Pressure Pressure, by Khan Academy, on YouTube
Here is another video about partial pressures (12min): Partial Pressure and Vapor Pressure, by Crash Course Chemistry, on YouTube
What if we have a mixture of different gases? We might want to know
how much of each there is. We can define the mole
fraction of a particular gas A as the number of moles of A
divided by the total number of moles of gas:
xA = nA/ntotal
Then we can define the partial pressure of A
as
pA = xAP
This works for real or ideal gases. Partial pressures are often used
to describe concentrations of gases. If the gas is ideal, then the
partial pressure is the same pressure that the gas would make if all
the other components of the mixture weren't there, because
pA = nART/V
In a real gas, this might not be true because the different gases
might interact a little bit differently.