Scientist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac experimented with a fixed volume of gas and observed the effect of change in pressure on the temperature of the gas. He found that the pressure is directly proportional to the temperature. When he increased the pressure of a fixed volume of gas, temperature of gas was increased.
When he plotted his findings in graphical form by putting pressure on Y axis and temperature on X axis, he found a straight line. And when he repeated his experiment with different volumes of gas, he again found straight lines but with different slopes. Each line of this graph is called isochore which means experiment is done under constant volume condition.
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| Gay Lussac’s law |
You might have experienced Gay Lussac’s law in hot summer days. Pressure in well inflated tyre is almost constant but when temperature increases in summer days it increases pressure and sometimes tyres may burst.
Do you know Gay Lussac’s law has also benefitted our defence services? Guns and other firing equipments are thrilling examples of Gay Lussac’s law. When gun pin strikes, it ignites the gun powder and this increases the temperature which in turn increases the pressure and bullet is fired from the gun. Gay Lussac’s law helps to fire bullet with higher pressure so it can travel longer with high speed, but if the loading chamber is not designed properly, the gun can burst due to increase in pressure.
Now you can understand why on the bottles of spray paint and deodorants there is a warning not to put even empty bottles in fire. Because on increasing the temperature they can burst due to increased pressure.
Gay Lussac’s law can be derived by Boyle’s and Charles law. So we have three basic laws which are given for gases, Avogadro law, Boyle’s and Charles law. If we combine the above three laws, we get a new equation. In the next post we will discuss about this new gas equation.
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