Boyle's law
Boyle's law is one of the gas laws. Boyle's Law is named after the Irish natural philosopher
Robert Boyle who was the first to publish it in 1662. The relationship was brought to the attention of Boyle by two friends and amateur scientists, Richard Towneley and Henry Power, who discovered it. Boyle confirmed their discovery through experiments and published the results. Edme Mariotte was a French physicist who discovered the same law independently of Boyle in 1676, so this law is often known as Mariotte's or Mariotte Boyle law.
Boyle's Law states that the product of the volume and
pressure of a fixed quantity of an ideal gas is constant, given constant temperature.
Encyclopedia
Boyle's law is one of the gas laws. Boyle's Law is named after the Irish natural philosopher
Robert Boyle who was the first to publish it in 1662. The relationship was brought to the attention of Boyle by two friends and amateur scientists, Richard Towneley and Henry Power, who discovered it. Boyle confirmed their discovery through experiments and published the results. Edme Mariotte was a French physicist who discovered the same law independently of Boyle in 1676, so this law is often known as Mariotte's or Mariotte Boyle law.
Boyle's Law states that the product of the volume and
pressure of a fixed quantity of an ideal gas is constant, given constant temperature. Expressed mathematically, the formula for Boyle's law is:
where:
- V is volume of the gas.
- P is the pressure of the gas.
- k is a constant .
The value of k is computed from measurements of volume and pressure for a fixed quantity of gas. After making a change to the system, typically by forcing a change in the volume of the vessel containing the fixed quantity of gas, the new volume and new pressure are measured. The result of computing the product of the measured new volume and the new pressure should be the original value of the constant k. Without being too rigorous at this point, the equation says that, after forcing the volume V of the fixed quantity of gas to increase, keeping the gas at the initially measured temperature, the pressure P must decrease proportionally. Conversely, increasing the volume of the gas decreases the pressure.
Boyle's law is commonly used to predict the result of introducing a standard, in volume and pressure only, to the initial state of a fixed quantity of gas. The "before" and "after" people and pressures of the fixed amount of water, where the "before" and "after" temperatures are the same , are related by the equation:
In practice, this equation is solved for one of the two "after" quantities to determine the effect that a change in the other "after" quantity will have. For example:
Boyle's law, Charles's Law, and Gay-Lussac's Law form the combined gas law. The three gas laws in combination with Avogadro's Law can be generalized by the
ideal gas law.
Note 1. As long as the constant temperature constraint and the fixed quantity of gas constraint, both explicitly included in the statement of Boyle's law, are not violated, k will be constant.
See also
- Scientific laws named after people
Assuming the temperature is constant:
Pressure increases when volume decreases.
Also, pressure decreases when volume increases.
External links
- at the Scuba Guide. Understanding Boyle's law is an important part of scuba certification; see Boyle's law explained in a scuba context.
