Boyles Lab

Boyle’s Law Lab

Purpose: To determine the relationship between pressure exerted and volume of a gas.
Materials: Lab simulation.
Procedure:
1. Open animation file 2. Modify the number of books that press down on the piston starting from 0 books and increasing by 1 each time until 19 books. 3. Record the pressure (# of books) and volume for 19 different pressure values. 4. Record those values in a table 5. Using the data, plot a graph of pressure in function of volume.
Conclusion: In this lab, the results show that for the most part, the more weight added (number of books), the smaller the volume became. However, at a few instances where additional books were added, the volume increased from the previous amount of books added.
Discussion: This lab could have been improved by performing the lab simulation multiple times and the data averaged out to reduce the percentage error. The results of this lab correspond to the rules of Boyle’s law, the volume of the container decreased as the pressure increased while the temperature remained the same.
Questions:
1. The mass of the air trapped inside the cylinder does not change from each try because since the air is not escaping and additional air is not entering, the mass cannot be changed. 2. Graph #1 shows a relationship between pressure and volume where the rate of decrease of the volume slows down while the pressure increases constantly. 3. Graph #2 shows a linear relationship between pressure and 1/volume. When the pressure increases at a constant rate, 1/volume also increases at a constant rate. 4. The fact that graph #2 is a straight line shows that the pressure and volume have a reciprocal relationship. 5. The pressure that is being exerted on the piston with no books is the atmospheric pressure that is caused by gravity pulling on the gases in the atmosphere. 6. KMT states that gas particles are held loosely together by weak attraction forces compared to liquids and solids. Gas particles can move freely around and are in constant motion. Therefore, if the volume is decreased, the particles will push against the container because of their energy more concentrated causing higher pressure. 7. Boyle’s law states that the pressure and volume vary inversely. This means that if the pressure decreases, the volume increases. When the weather balloon rises to its maximum altitude, the pressure becomes lower causing the volume to increase. The balloons appear under-inflated when released because the pressure is higher at ground level which causes the volume to become lower.