Absolute Zero

[Asian]

What would happen to the volume and pressure of the gas if it reached absolute zero?

[Klaynos]

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...

[woelen]

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.