Boyle's law

An animation showing the relationship between pressure and volume.The amount and temperature of the gas are constant.

Boyle's law (also called Mariotte's law and the Boyle-Mariotte law) is a law about ideal gases.

The law can be stated as follows:[1]

For a fixed amount of an ideal gas kept at a fixed temperature, P (pressure) and V (volume) are inversely proportional.

In other words, the volume of a constant mass of ideal gas at a constant temperature is inversely proportional to its pressure.[2]

In symbols, the law is:

$P \propto \frac{1}{V}$

or

$PV = k$

where P is the pressure of the gas, V is the volume of the gas, and k is a constant.

For a given mass of gas at a constant temperature, the product of the pressure and the volume is a constant. As the volume decreases, the pressure increases in proprotion, and vice versa. For example, when the pressure halves, the volume doubles.

Suppose you have a tank that contains a certain volume of gas at a certain pressure. When you decrease the volume of the tank, the same number of gas particles is now contained in a smaller space. Therefore, the number of collisions increases. Therefore, the pressure is greater.[3]

Imagine you have a gas at a certain pressure (P1) and volume (V1). If you change the pressure to a new value (P2), the volume changes to a new value (V2). We can use use Boyle's law to describe both sets of conditions:[3]

$P_1 V_1 = k$
$P_2 V_2 = k$

The constant, k, is the same in both cases, so we can say the following:[3]

$P_1 V_1 = P_2 V_2$

Example: The pressure of a gas is 3 atm and the volume is 5 litres. If the pressure is reduced to 2 atm, what is the volume?

$P_1 V_1 = P_2 V_2$
$V_2 = \frac{P_1 V_1}{P_2}$
$V_2 = \frac{3*5}{2}$
$V_2 = \frac{15}{2}$
$V_2 = 7.5$

∴ The volume will be 7.5 litres.

The law was found by Robert Boyle in 1662, and afterwards independently by Edme Mariotte in 1679.[2][4][5]

References

1. Levine, Ira N. (2009). Physical Chemistry (Sixth ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 10. ISBN 978–0–07–253862–5.
2. Daintith, John, ed. (2008). A Dictionary of Chemistry (Sixth ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-19-920463-2.
3. Moore, John T. (2010). Chemistry Essentials For Dummies. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 163. ISBN 978-0-470-61836-3.
4. Ganot, Adolphe; Atkinson, Edmund (1883) (in English). Éléments de Physique [Elementary Treatise on Physics] (Eleventh ed.). London: Longmans, Green, and Co. p. 142.
5. West, John B. (2005-01-01), "Robert Boyle’s landmark book of 1660 with the first experiments on rarified air", Journal of Applied Physiology 98 (1): pp. 31-39, doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00759.2004