A sealed, rigid container holds a fixed quantity of an ideal gas. A student gradually…
PHYSICS · Multi-part · CBSE · Physics · Thermal Properties of Matter · Thermal Properties of Matter
Problem
A sealed, rigid container holds a fixed quantity of an ideal gas. A student gradually warms the gas and records the absolute pressure P (in kPa) at several temperatures T measured on the Celsius scale. The student plots P on the vertical axis and T on the horizontal axis and observes that the data points lie very nearly on a straight line.
(a) Explain, without using any numerical calculation, why the graph of P versus T is expected to be linear when volume and amount of gas are held constant.
(b) Describe how the temperature at which the straight line would intersect the horizontal axis can be obtained from the graph, and interpret the physical significance of that temperature.
(c) Suppose the student’s linear fit predicts that the pressure would reach zero at −275∘C. Convert this temperature to the Kelvin scale and comment on how well it agrees with the accepted value of absolute zero.