Chemistry » Gases » Relating Pressure, Volume, Amount, and Temperature: The Ideal Gas Law

# Moles of Gas and Volume: Avogadro’s Law

## Moles of Gas and Volume: Avogadro’s Law

The Italian scientist Amedeo Avogadro advanced a hypothesis in 1811 to account for the behavior of gases, stating that equal volumes of all gases, measured under the same conditions of temperature and pressure, contain the same number of molecules. Over time, this relationship was supported by many experimental observations as expressed by Avogadro’s law: For a confined gas, the volume (V) and number of moles (n) are directly proportional if the pressure and temperature both remain constant.

In equation form, this is written as:

$$\begin{array}{ccccc}V\propto n& \text{or}& V=k\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}×\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}n& \text{or}& \frac{{V}_{1}}{{n}_{1}}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\frac{{V}_{2}}{{n}_{2}}\end{array}$$

Mathematical relationships can also be determined for the other variable pairs, such as P versus n, and n versus T.

### Resource:

Visit this interactive PhET simulation to investigate the relationships between pressure, volume, temperature, and amount of gas. Use the simulation to examine the effect of changing one parameter on another while holding the other parameters constant (as described in the preceding sections on the various gas laws).