Charles's Law: How Temperature changes gas Volume
While working on the greenhouse experiment, I put a balloon with carbon dioxide inside the freezer to lower the density to ensure it would stay at the bottom of the jar while doing the experiment. One thing I noticed is that the balloon shrunk. I found this interesting and I decided to investigate more. To understand what happened we need to realize that a gas consists of molecules that are moving in space. The hotter the gas is the faster they move. Conversely the colder it is the slower they move. In my case the gas with CO2 inside the freezer became cooler and the molecules inside the balloon started to move slower which means they don't push as hard against the balloon, so then the ballon shrinks. It turns out that there is a law in physics called Charles's Law that explains the relationship between the temperature and the volume of a gas. The law states that the volume of a fixed amount of gas is directly proportional to its absolute temperature, provided the pressure rema...