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Gas laws
The physical laws describing the behaviour of gases under fixed pressure, volume, amount of gas, and absolute temperature conditions are called gas laws. The basic gas laws were discovered by the end of the 18th century when scientists found out that relationships between pressure, volume and temperature of a sample of gas could be obtained which would hold to approximation for all gases. The combination of several empirical gas laws led to the development of the ideal gas law.
The ideal gas law was later found to be consistent with atomic and kinetic theory.
In 1643, the Italian physicist and mathematician, Evangelista Torricelli, who for a few months had acted as Galileo Galilei's secretary, conducted a celebrated experiment in Florence. He demonstrated that a column of mercury in an inverted tube can be supported by the pressure of air outside of the tube, with the creation of a small section of vacuum above the mercury. This experiment essentially paved the way towards the invention of the barometer, as well as drawing the attention of Robert Boyle, then a "skeptical" scientist working in England. Boyle was inspired by Torricelli's experiment to investigate how the elasticity of air responds to varying pressure, and he did this through a series of experiments with a setup reminiscent of that used by Torricelli. Boyle published his results in 1662.
Later on, in 1676, the French physicist Edme Mariotte, independently arrived at the same conclusions of Boyle, while also noting some dependency of air volume on temperature. However it took another century and a half for the development of thermometry and recognition of the absolute zero temperature scale, which eventually allowed the discovery of temperature-dependent gas laws.
In 1662, Robert Boyle systematically studied the relationship between the volume and pressure of a fixed amount of gas at a constant temperature. He observed that the volume of a given mass of a gas is inversely proportional to its pressure at a constant temperature. Boyle's law, published in 1662, states that, at a constant temperature, the product of the pressure and volume of a given mass of an ideal gas in a closed system is always constant. It can be verified experimentally using a pressure gauge and a variable volume container. It can also be derived from the kinetic theory of gases: if a container, with a fixed number of molecules inside, is reduced in volume, more molecules will strike a given area of the sides of the container per unit time, causing a greater pressure.
Boyle's law states that:
The concept can be represented with these formulae:
where P is the pressure, V is the volume of a gas, and k1 is the constant in this equation (and is not the same as the proportionality constants in the other equations).
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Gas laws
The physical laws describing the behaviour of gases under fixed pressure, volume, amount of gas, and absolute temperature conditions are called gas laws. The basic gas laws were discovered by the end of the 18th century when scientists found out that relationships between pressure, volume and temperature of a sample of gas could be obtained which would hold to approximation for all gases. The combination of several empirical gas laws led to the development of the ideal gas law.
The ideal gas law was later found to be consistent with atomic and kinetic theory.
In 1643, the Italian physicist and mathematician, Evangelista Torricelli, who for a few months had acted as Galileo Galilei's secretary, conducted a celebrated experiment in Florence. He demonstrated that a column of mercury in an inverted tube can be supported by the pressure of air outside of the tube, with the creation of a small section of vacuum above the mercury. This experiment essentially paved the way towards the invention of the barometer, as well as drawing the attention of Robert Boyle, then a "skeptical" scientist working in England. Boyle was inspired by Torricelli's experiment to investigate how the elasticity of air responds to varying pressure, and he did this through a series of experiments with a setup reminiscent of that used by Torricelli. Boyle published his results in 1662.
Later on, in 1676, the French physicist Edme Mariotte, independently arrived at the same conclusions of Boyle, while also noting some dependency of air volume on temperature. However it took another century and a half for the development of thermometry and recognition of the absolute zero temperature scale, which eventually allowed the discovery of temperature-dependent gas laws.
In 1662, Robert Boyle systematically studied the relationship between the volume and pressure of a fixed amount of gas at a constant temperature. He observed that the volume of a given mass of a gas is inversely proportional to its pressure at a constant temperature. Boyle's law, published in 1662, states that, at a constant temperature, the product of the pressure and volume of a given mass of an ideal gas in a closed system is always constant. It can be verified experimentally using a pressure gauge and a variable volume container. It can also be derived from the kinetic theory of gases: if a container, with a fixed number of molecules inside, is reduced in volume, more molecules will strike a given area of the sides of the container per unit time, causing a greater pressure.
Boyle's law states that:
The concept can be represented with these formulae:
where P is the pressure, V is the volume of a gas, and k1 is the constant in this equation (and is not the same as the proportionality constants in the other equations).