Asian Posted February 15, 2007 Share Posted February 15, 2007 What would happen to the volume and pressure of the gas if it reached absolute zero? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaynos Posted February 15, 2007 Share Posted February 15, 2007 Firstly you can't reach absolute zero in equilibrium, you can get very close though. If we just consider an ideal gas: PV=nRT Where: P = pressure V = volume n = number of moles (I think) R = Gas constant T = pressure Most gases will suffer a phase transition to something else at very low temperatures. Although this isn't really correct as if you look at this as T->0 the PV->0 so if you hold pressure constant then V->0 this cannot happen due to statistical physics, I'm a bit tired right now so can't really explain this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statistics Would be a worthwhile read... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woelen Posted February 16, 2007 Share Posted February 16, 2007 The equations for the gas law are macroscopic equations, which are based on statistics. At temperatures near 0 K these approximations do not apply anymore, the equations only are good approximations of reality over a certain interval of temperatures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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