Avogadro's Law K-12 Experiments for Lesson Plans & Science Fair Projects

Avogadro's Law K-12 Experiments & Background Information For Science Labs, Lesson Plans, Class Activities & Science Fair Projects For Middle and High School Students & Teachers

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Avogadro's Law K-12 Experiments

Avogadro's Law Background

Avogadro's law is one of the gas laws. The law is named after Amedeo Avogadro, who in 1811 hypothesized that equal volumes of gases, at the same temperature and pressure, contain the same number of particles, or molecules. Thus, the number of molecules in a specific volume of gas is independent of the size or mass of the gas molecules.(See: this site for an English translation of his 1811 paper).

The minor aspect of the law can be stated mathematically as:

$\qquad {{V} \over {n}}= a$ .

-where:

V is the volume of the gas.
n is the number of moles in the gas.
a is a constant.

However, this above equation is just a trivial one, which is valid for all homogeneous substances, including homogeneous liquids and solids. This relation is easy to deduce, its validity was assumed before Avogadro's work.

The most important consequence of Avogadro's law is the following: The ideal gas constant has the same value for all gases. This means that the constant const of

$\frac{p_1\cdot V_1}{T_1\cdot n_1}=\frac{p_2\cdot V_2}{T_2 \cdot n_2} = const$

has the same value for all gases, independent of the size or mass of the gas molecules. This statement is nontrivial, and it containts Avogadro's ingenious insight in the nature of ideal gases. It took decades to prove Avogadro's law based on the kinetic theory of gases.

One mole of an ideal gas occupies 22.4 liters (dm³) at STP. This is often referred to as the molar volume of an ideal gas. Real gases may deviate from this value.

The number of molecules in one mole is called Avogadro's number: approximately 6.022×10²³ particles per mole.

Avogadro's law, together with the combined gas law, forms the ideal gas law.

See also