c01 JWBS043-Rogers September 13, 2010 11:20 Printer Name: Yet to Come

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IDEAL GAS LAWS

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thoughtful people, influenced by the

success of early scientists like Galileo and Newton in the fields of mechanics and

astronomy, began to look more carefully for quantitative connections among the

phenomena around them. Among these people were the chemist Robert Boyle and

the famous French balloonist Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles. ́

1.1 EMPIRICAL GAS LAWS

Many physical chemistry textbooks begin, quite properly, with a statement of Boyle’s

and Charles’s laws of ideal gases:

pV=k 1 (Boyle, 1662)

and

V=k 2 T (Charles, 1787)

The constantsk 1 andk 2 can be approximated simply by averaging a series of experi-

mental measurements, first ofpVat constant temperatureTfor the Boyle equation,

then ofV/Tat constant pressurepfor Charles’s law. All this can be done using simple

manometers and thermometers.

Concise Physical Chemistry,by Donald W. Rogers

Copyright©C2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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