Charles' Law

Jacques Charles studied the relationship between the volume of gas and how it can change with temperature, noting that the volume of gas can increase with the temperature, creating what is known as the Charles Law.

Examples of Charles Law can be seen when watching a hot air balloon lift off. When the hot air expands and fills the balloon, the balloon will begin to rise. As the air expands the balloon get bigger, it counters gravity, causing the balloon to rise.

Charles law of pressure can refer to the second half of the Charles’ law. The law of pressure shows that when the volume is kept constant, by raising the temperature this will increase the pressure of the gas, such as in a scuba tank. With the interest in hot air balloons at the time it is easy to understand the interest in temperature volume relationship for a gas.

While the Charles’s law and Boyle’s law are similar they also have major differences. Boyle kept properties of the gas constant, except for pressure and volume, where the Charles’ law of gas worked to keep all gas properties constant with the exception of temperature and volume. The Charles gas law hands on experiments can be done somewhat imply. For this a quantity of gas is trapped in a J-shaped glass tube, representing a snorkel and sealed at one end. Once immersed in water, by changing the temperature of the water, the temperature of the gases would also change; this is another way of making a balloon smaller other than taking it underwater. By putting a balloon in a freezer, as the balloon loses its heat and the molecular motion decreases the balloon will become smaller in size.

When it comes to the relevance of diving, for example, keep a scuba tank that has been filled in the sun, it will heat up. The heat will cause the molecules to move more quickly, but they will not have the room to expand – this can cause the tank if the temperature increases too much, to explode causing serious and fatal damage to anything its path, as it is known to become a torpedo like object.

As this compares to Boyle’s law, Boyle was not interested in changing pressure, but rather the temperature of an object and the effects it has on the body, Charles’s however, was more interested in the temperature and how it adversely affect the objects in the experiments, leading to the importance it can have when diving.