These laws describe the relationships between the physical quantities pressure, volume and temperature as they relate to gases.
Why Learn the Gas Laws?
- The gas laws tell us how gases behave when subjected to various pressures ($P$), made to fit into certain volumes ($V$) or kept at specific absolute temperatures ($T$)
- Very important when combinations of these situations are considered
- Each law usually keeps one physical quantity constant while varying the others so as to have us see the relationship between those varied quantities
Boyle’s Law
- Named after physicist and chemist Robert Boyle
- The pressure of a fixed mass of gas is inversely proportional to its volume at a constant temperature:
Thus we can have $P_1V_1=k$ and $P_2V_2=k$. Combining these two we get: $$ \begin{equation}\begin{aligned} P_1V_1=P_2V_2\\ \end{aligned}\end{equation} $$ Where $P_1$ is the pressure associated with the gas of volume $V_1$ and $P_2$ is associated with $V_2$.
Example
A small balloon is filled with $0.005\ m^3$ of air and has a pressure of $108\ kPa$.
If the balloon is squeezed to cause it to have a lower volume of $0.004\ m^3$, determine the new pressure inside of the balloon.
If the balloon can only withstand a pressure of $111\ kPa$, does the balloon pop in the process of squeezing it to this new volume?
Mission details
A gas exerts a pressure of $3\ kPa$ on the walls of container 1. When container 1 is emptied into a $10\ m^3$ container, the pressure exerted by the gas increases to $6\ kPa$. Find the volume of container 1.