On the Gas Laws

The experiment this week focused on two simple equations that we encountered in our Chemistry classes: Boyle’s law and Charles’ law. The first states that, with temperature constant, the product of a gas’ pressure and volume at any point in time is a constant. The second states that, with pressure constant, volume divided by the temperature is a constant.

We were tasked to demonstrate the potency of these two laws using a syringe and heat engine apparatus. For Boyle’s law, we connected the syringe to the pressure sensor and manipulated the volume of the syringe by pressing down. We took the pressure reading and got P*V. Theoretically, P*V should be a constant but the measurements we obtained were not. We blame this error on the syringe-sensor interface. Since the interface was not secured, gas might have leaked out. For Charles’ law, we put the heat engine on its side and connected it to the air chamber can placed on a hot bath. We then cooled the temperature by constantly adding ice. We obtained V/t and saw that this also did not equal a constant. The error might have been due to leakage and improper V-t measurement.