STATES OF MATTER

The empirical gas laws

The empirical gas laws are those that have been
arrived at by experiment. Behavior of the gases
with change in pressure, volume and
temperature has been widely studied. And the
relation between the various changes is given
by the gas laws. They include Boyle’s law,
Charles’ law, Gay-Lussac’s law, Graham’s law of
partial pressures and Graham’s law of diffusion.
Boyle’s Law: the volume-pressure relationship

In the gaseous state, the forces of attraction

between the molecules are minimum, and hence
the molecules are far apart from one another and
their positions are not fixed. Hence, gases have
neither definite shape nor definite volume.
Some of the characteristic features of gases are that
they have low intermolecular forces of attraction
and they are highly compressible.
The compressibility of gases can be
explained by the low intermolecular
forces of attraction and high space in
between the molecules of the gases.
Since the intermolecular space is very
large, the gas molecules can be moved
closer if some external pressure is
applied on them.
 NB. A hyperbola (plural hyperbolas or hyperbolae)
is a type of smooth curve, lying in a plane, defined
by its geometric properties.
At normal temperatures and pressure, most gases obey
Boyle’s law rather well we call this ideal behaviour.
Jacques Charles (1746-1823) and Joseph Gay-Lussac
(1778-1850) began studying the expansion of
gases with increasing temperature. Their studies
showed that the rate of expansion with increased
temperature was constant and was the same for
all they studied as long as the pressure remained
constant. The implication of their discovery were
not fully recognized until nearly a century later.
The scientists used this behaviour of gases as the
basis of a new temperature scale, the absolute
temperature scale.
Note that the change in momentum of a
particle on collision is called the impulse.