Chapter 12: Gases

Enhanced Introductory College Chemistry

by Gregory Anderson; Caryn Fahey; Jackie MacDonald; Adrienne Richards; Samantha Sullivan Sauer; J.R. van Haarlem; and  David Wegman;

Chapter Contents

In this chapter, you will learn about

  • The relationships of Pressure, Temperature and Volume as they pertain to gases
  • The nature of gas particle movement

To better support your learning, you should be familiar with the following concepts before starting this chapter:

  • Mathematics
  • Stoichiomentry
A photograph shows about thirty colorful hot air balloons in the air at various distances against a blue twilight sky.
Figure 12a The hot air inside these balloons is less dense than the surrounding cool air. This results in a buoyant force that causes the balloons to rise when their guy lines are untied. (credit: work by Elif Tütüncü, CC BY-SA 4.0)

We are surrounded by an ocean of gas—the atmosphere—and many of the properties of gases are familiar to us from our daily activities. Heated gases expand, which can make a hot air balloon rise (Figure 12.a) or cause a blowout in a bicycle tire left in the sun on a hot day.

Gases have played an important part in the development of chemistry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many scientists investigated gas behaviour, providing the first mathematical descriptions of the behaviour of matter.

In this chapter, we will examine the relationships between gas temperature, pressure, amount, and volume. We will study a simple theoretical model and use it to analyze the experimental behaviour of gases. The results of these analyses will show us the limitations of the theory and how to improve on it.

Attribution & References

Except where otherwise noted, this page is adapted by JR van Haarlem from “Chapter 8 Introduction” In General Chemistry 1 & 2 by Rice University, a derivative of Chemistry (Open Stax) by Paul Flowers, Klaus Theopold, Richard Langley & William R. Robinson and is licensed under CC BY 4.0. ​Access for free at Chemistry (OpenStax)

License

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Chemistry v. 1 backup Copyright © 2023 by Gregory Anderson; Caryn Fahey; Jackie MacDonald; Adrienne Richards; Samantha Sullivan Sauer; J.R. van Haarlem; and David Wegman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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