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Gas Laws
Charles's Law
Concepts

The next significant advance in the study of gases came in the early 1800's in France. Hot air balloons were extremely popular at that time andscientists were eager to improve the performance of their balloons. Two prominent french scientists, Jacques Charles and Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, made detailed measurements on how thevolume of a gas was affected by the temperature of the gas. Given the interest in hot air balloons at that time, it is easy to understand why these men should be interested in thetemperature-volume relationship for a gas.

Just as Robert Boyle made efforts to keep all properties of the gas constant except for the pressure and volume, so Jacques Charles tookcare to keep all properties of the gas constant except for temperature and volume. The equipment used by Jacques Charles was similar to that employed by Robert Boyle. A quantity of gaswas trapped in a J-shaped glass tube that was sealed at one end. This tube was immersed in a water bath; by changing the temperature of the water Charles was able to change thetemperature of the gas. The pressure was held constant by adjusting the height of mercury so that the two columns of mercury had equal height, and thus the pressure was always equal to theatmospheric pressure.

Intuitively, it is expected that the volume of the gas will increase as the temperature increases. Is this relationship linear? A plot of V vs T can be used totest this hypothesis.

If a decrease in temperature results in a decrease in volume, what happens if the temperature is lowered to a point where the volume drops to zero? Anegative volume is obviously impossible, so the temperature at which the volume drops to zero must, in some sense, be the lowest temperature that can be achieved. This temperature is call