Lab 3: The Ideal Gas Law

     We started with an activity that consisted on heating up a soda can filled with water, then put it in a beaker with ice water.

     Here is professor Mason heating up the aluminum can.

This was the result of the can after placing it in water.

     Our team correctly predicted that the can will rapidly implode because after being heated up, the steam tries to push the air out and the water gas molecules start to occupy all the space in the can. When the can is put inside the water, it rapidly implodes because the outside pressure is bigger than the pressure inside the can since the hot molecules inside the can begin to cool down, there is less collision between them and the wall of the can, and the steam immediately condenses.

     Professor Mason repeated the same process but with the difference that now the can was only filled with air. This time the can suck in some water after being put upside down into the beaker.

     This picture shows seven different units of pressure. Also it shows the procedure to calculate the air pressure at the sea level.

     We conducted another experiment that consisted on using a syringe to measure pressure as a function of volume. We calculated the pressure in logger pro, and the volume by looking at the syringe.

     Once we had our data, we plotted the corresponding set of points in another table in order to graph our function. We fit the curve with a quadratic equation, which at first make sense, but later on it would not work because the quadratic fit will eventually go up.

Here is the equipment used to calculate the pressure.

     After realizing that the quadratic equation didn't work, we fit the curve with an inverse function y = A/x + B.

     Here is our prediction vs the computer data. This experiment consisted of Boyle's law, which states that at constant temperature for a fixed mass, the absolute pressure and the volume of gas are inversely proportional. Meaning that pressure is proportional to 1/volume.

     The next experiment consisted on using Gay Lussac's law, which says that the volume of ideal gases are held constant; thereby, allowing the pressure and temperature to change.

This is our prediction of pressure as a function of temperature graph.

After putting the glass container connected to the syringe in hot water, the syringe's volume increases.

We were trying to find the relation between pressure and temperature when the volume was held constant. The relation ended to be linear.

In this problem, we found Avogadro's number by dividing the ideal gas law constant over Boltzmann constant.

This was a problem about diving a bell.

     The next experiment we did was Vacuum Chamber Demos, where a ballon is placed into a vacuum chamber, the procedure consist on decreasing the pressure outside the balloon; as a consequence, it causes the pressure inside the balloon to decrease as well, moreover, the volume of the balloon increases over time.

Ballon before the experiment.

As we can see here, the balloon gained volume.

     We repeated the ballon process with marshmallows instead, in order to see what will be the final state of the marshmallows.

The experiment showed that the marshmallows after experiencing an increase in volume, the final state became smaller and more skinny compared to a normal marshmallow.

This was the last problem that we did in class, it consisted of a high air ballon and we were asked to find the mass of the helium. We solved it by using PV = nRT in order to find the number of mole. Then with the result, we then used n = m/molar mass of helium in order to find the mass.