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Concept
Avogadro's law
Summary
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:
Avogadro's law states that "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 1812, 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 observe 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.
The law can be written as:
or
where
V is the volume of the gas;
n is the amount of substance of the gas (measured in moles);
k is a constant for a given temperature and pressure.
This law describes how, under the same condition of temperature and pressure, equal volumes of all gases contain the same number of molecules. For comparing the same substance under two different sets of conditions, the law can be usefully expressed as follows:
The equation shows that, as the number of moles of gas increases, the volume of the gas also increases in proportion. Similarly, if the number of moles of gas is decreased, then the volume also decreases. Thus, the number of molecules or atoms in a specific volume of ideal gas is independent of their size or the molar mass of the gas.
The derivation of Avogadro's law follows directly from the ideal gas law, i.e.
where R is the gas constant, T is the Kelvin temperature, and P is the pressure (in pascals).
Official source
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