Physics: Avogadro's law

Avogadro's law Avogadro's law (sometimes referred to as Avogadro's hypothesis or Avogadro's principle) or Avogadro-Ampère's hypothesis is an experimental gas law relating the volume of a gas to the amount of substance of gas present.

Commentary

Commentary

Avogadro's law Avogadro's law (sometimes referr ed to as Avogadro's hypothesis or Avogadro's principle) or Avogadro-Ampère's hypothesis is an experimental gas law relating the volume of a gas to the amount of substance of gas present.

Commentary

Why does Avogadro's law matter? This principle i s one of the building blocks physicists use to explain the world. Without it, a whole class of phenomena would have no mathematical description. Engineers, chemists, and astronomers all rely on it.

Commentary

Background: Avogadro's law Avogadro's law (sometimes referred to as Avogadro's hypothesis or Avogadro's principle) or Avogadro-Ampère's hypothesis is an experimental gas law relating the volume of a gas to the amount of substance of gas present. The law is a specific case of the ideal gas law. A modern statement is: "equal volumes of all gases, at the same temperature and pressure, have the same number of molecules." For a given mass of an ideal gas, the volume and amount (moles) of the gas are directly proportional if the temperature and pressure are constant. The law is named after Amedeo Avogadro who, in 1811, hypothesized that two given samples of an ideal gas, of the same volume and at the same temperature and pressure, contain the same number of molecules. As an example, equal volumes of gaseous hydrogen and nitrogen contain the same number of molecules when they are at the same temperature and pressure, and display ideal gas behavior. In practice, real gases show small deviations from the ideal behavior and the law holds only approximately, but is still a useful approximation for scientists.