It may sound like a big volume, but it’s not. It’s almost half a liter, so it’s half a bottle of soda.
Grindstones and particles
These moles are not furry creatures that make holes in the ground. The name comes from molecules (which is apparently too long to write).
Here is an example to help you understand the idea of a mole. Suppose you pass an electric current through the water. A molecule of water is made up of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. (This is H2O.) This electric current breaks the water molecule and hydrogen gas is obtained (H2) and gaseous oxygen (O2).
Actually, this is a pretty simple experiment. Check it out here:
Because water has twice as many hydrogen atoms as oxygen, you get twice as many hydrogen molecules. We can see this if we collect the gases from this water: we know the proportion of molecules, but we do not know the number. That’s why we use moles. It’s basically just a way of counting the countless.
Don’t worry, there’s actually a way to find the number of particles in a mole, but for that you need the Avogadro number. If you have a liter of air at room temperature and normal pressure (we call it atmospheric pressure), then there will be about 0.04 moles. (This would be the law of ideal gases.) Using Avogadro’s number, we get 2.4 x 1022 particles. You can’t count so high. No one can. But this is N, the number of particles, in the other version of the law of ideal gases.
Constants
Just a quick note: you almost always need some kind of constant for an equation with variables that represent different things. Just look at the right side of the law of ideal gases, where we have the pressure multiplied by the volume. The units on this left side would be the newtonmeters, which is the same as a joule, the unit of energy.
On the right side is the number of moles and the temperature in Kelvin; these two do not multiply to give joules units. But you must they have the same units on both sides of the equation, otherwise it would be like comparing apples and oranges. This is where the constant R comes to the rescue. It has joules / units (mol × Kelvin) so the mol × Kelvin is canceled and you only get joules. Boom: Now both sides have the same units.
Let us now look at some examples of the law of ideal gases using a normal rubber balloon.
Inflating a balloon
What happens when a balloon explodes? It is clearly adding air to the system. As you do this, the balloon gets bigger, so its volume increases.
What about indoor temperature and pressure? Suppose they are constant.
I will include arrows next to the changing variables. An up arrow means an increase and a down arrow means a decrease.
