Several properties of gases can be experimentally measured: temperature, pressure, volume, and the amount of the gas (i.e., the number of moles). The ideal gas law states that the relationship between these properties, or variables, in a mathematical formula.
The ideal gas law is PV = nRT.
P is the pressure in atmospheres (atm), V is the volume in liters (L), n is the number of moles, R is the gas constant (0.0821 L∙atm/(mol∙K)), and T is the temperature in Kelvins (K).
Consider the following conditions: carbon dioxide gas was placed into a 3 L balloon, under a temperature of 305 K, resulting in 2.6 moles of carbon dioxide.
Assume you are going to use the ideal gas law to solve for the unknown variable.
What variable are you solving for?
Are all of variables in the correct units? If not, which variable needs to be converted to the correct units?
In this scenario, we are given the volume (V = 3 L), temperature (T = 305 K), and number of moles (n = 2.6 mol) of carbon dioxide gas. We need to solve for the pressure (P) of the gas.
All of the variables are in the correct units except for the pressure, which is typically measured in atmospheres (atm) in the ideal gas law. Therefore, if the pressure is not given in atm, it needs to be converted to atm before solving the equation.