Avogadro's law (sometimes referred to as Avogadro's hypothesis or Avogadro's principle) is a gas law named after Amedeo Avogadro who, in 1811,[1] hypothesized that two given samples of an ideal gas, at the same temperature, pressure and volume, contain the same number of molecules. Thus, the number of molecules or atoms in a specific volume of gas is independent of their size or the molar mass of the gas.
As an example, equal volumes of molecular hydrogen and nitrogen contain the same number of molecules when they are at the same temperature and pressure, and observe ideal gas behavior. In practice, real gases show small deviations from the ideal behavior and the law holds only approximately, but is still a useful approximation.
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Avogadro's law is stated mathematically as:
Where:
The most significant consequence of Avogadro's law is that the ideal gas constant has the same value for all gases. This means that:
Where:
A common rearrangement of this equation is by letting R be the proportionality constant, and rearranging as follows:
This equation is known as the ideal gas law.
Taking STP to be 101.325 kPa and 293.15 K, we can find the volume of one mole of a gas: