Gas Laws: Boyle’s Law

You have become quite familiar with the atoms and molecules. These atoms and their interactions make matter. We are surrounded by three kinds of matter; gas, liquid and solid. Gas is the simplest form of matter, it is formed by atoms or molecules which are randomly moving around. When they are forced to come closer they form liquid phase, in this state of matter molecules have a few boundations, like they have to move together. And when these molecules are forced to have a much disciplined behaviour, they make the solid state of matter. Here molecules are much disciplined, just like an army battalion.
In this post we will explore properties of gases. Let’s list out the properties of gases that we know:

• We can fill a gas in any vessel as it has no shape,
• We can compress a gas,
• Gases have lower density than liquids and solids,
• We can mix gases without using any stirrer,
• Gases exert pressure evenly.

Now we will see what the scientists have discovered about gases. Scientists experimented with gases and found out how they behave with changing temperature, pressure and volume. There are four variables; number of moles of the gas, temperature, pressure and volume. If you want to find the relation between any two of them, you have to keep the other two constant.

Robert Boyle experimented with the compressible nature of gas. He took a fixed amount of gas at a constant temperature, then compressed it by increasing pressure on it and observed the change in volume occupied by the gas.

In his experiment, he found that when he increased pressure, the gas became compressed and the volume occupied by the gas was decreased. Mathematically, he found that, the pressure is inversely proportional to the volume. When he represented his findings in a graph where he put Pressure in y axis and volume at x axis. He found a curve.

Graphs of Boyle's law

And when he repeated his experiment at different temperatures he found graphs with different curves, so he came to the conclusion that the product of pressure and volume is a constant but this constant is different for a given set of temperature and amount of the gas. That’s why he found different curves in (P vs V) graphs for different temperatures.

In the next post we will discuss more about Boyel’s experiments and see what did he concluded with his experiments and how do we get benefitted with his findings. 

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