Last week, we had just previously learned about Real Gases and several key formulas we needed to know about them. These formulas include Charles Law, Boyle's Law, Gay Lussac's Law, Avogadro's Law, the Combined Gas Law, and the Ideal Gas Law. We used these formulas to solve basic problems involving mass or the moles of an reactant/product, volume, pressure, and temperature. A list of these formulas can be found at the link below. This list also includes Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures and Van Der Waals's equation.
After learning about gas laws and how to calculate these different problems, we dove into a new topic called KMT or Kinetic Molecular Theory. Here, we learned about the Main Tenets of KMT such as they have negligible volume as well as negligible attractive and repulsive forces. We also learned that smaller molecules have a larger root mean square speed than larger molecules. One of the bigger concepts we learned with KMT though was effusion, the escape of tiny gas particles through a small hole in space. We could also see larger molecules generally effused out of a substance much slower than smaller particles did. this can be seen in Graham's Law of Effusion shown below.
We finished out the week learning about Real Gases and what makes a gas stray from ideal behavior. We looked at how we could see this separation using the van der Waals equation. This equation had several parts (such as "a" and "b") that allowed us to further understand how theses gases may stray from ideal behavior. On Thursday, Dr. Finnan conducted an awesome demonstration using Liquid Nitrogen that was renowned by the entire class as one of the coolest things they've ever seen.
Overall, we learned a lot of new concepts and important information regarding Gases over the past few weeks. I still have a few unanswered questions regarding some of the key concepts but once I prepare for the Wednesday test by reviewing the PowerPoints and Hotpots, I'm sure the information will become much more clear. My participation in class these past few weeks has much improved from previous weeks but is still something I really need to work on moving forward. On a scale of 1-5, I would rate my understanding at a 4 of the information we've learned over the past few weeks. I need to study pretty hard this week in order to be prepared for the test. Once I review these formulas for Partial Pressures as well as the basic concepts, I should be able to master all of this material.
