Ch 2: Physical Science - Understanding Gases: Help and Review
About This Chapter
Who's it for?
Anyone who needs help learning or mastering high school physical science material will benefit from taking this course. There is no faster or easier way to learn high school physical science. Among those who would benefit are:
- Students who have fallen behind in understanding relevant scientific laws or the properties and characteristics of gases
- Students who struggle with learning disabilities or learning differences, including autism and ADHD
- Students who prefer multiple ways of learning science (visual or auditory)
- Students who have missed class time and need to catch up
- Students who need an efficient way to learn about gases
- Students who struggle to understand their teachers
- Students who attend schools without extra science learning resources
How it works:
- Find videos in our course that cover what you need to learn or review.
- Press play and watch the video lesson.
- Refer to the video transcripts to reinforce your learning.
- Test your understanding of each lesson with short quizzes.
- Verify you're ready by completing the Physical Science - Understanding Gases chapter exam.
Why it works:
- Study Efficiently: Skip what you know, review what you don't.
- Retain What You Learn: Engaging animations and real-life examples make topics easy to grasp.
- Be Ready on Test Day: Use the Physical Science - Understanding Gases chapter exam to be prepared.
- Get Extra Support: Ask our subject-matter experts any question about gases. They're here to help!
- Study With Flexibility: Watch videos on any web-ready device.
Students will review:
This chapter helps students review the concepts in an understanding gases unit of a standard high school physical science course. Topics covered include:
- Kinetic molecular theory
- Pressure
- Density of gas measurements
- Dalton's law of partial pressure
- The Boltzmann distribution
- Graham's law
- Use of Avogadro's law to calculate the quantity or volume of a gas
- Boyle's law
- Charles' law
- Gay-Lussac's law
- Use of the ideal gas law and the gas constant
- Real gases

1. The Kinetic Molecular Theory: Properties of Gases
What makes a gas ideal? What types of characteristics do ideal gases have? In this lesson, we will discuss the many characteristics of gases and how knowing the microscopic properties of gas particles will help you understand the macroscopic properties of a gas.

2. Pressure: Definition, Units, and Conversions
Have you ever wondered what pressure is and how it gets measured? In this lesson, we are going to define pressure and explain some of the units that are used to express measurements of pressure.

3. Temperature Units: Converting Between Kelvins and Celsius
Have you ever wondered what the lowest possible temperature is? In this lesson, you will learn what temperature measures. You will also be introduced to the Kelvin scale (an absolute scale) and learn how it relates to the Celsius scale.

4. How to Find the Density of a Gas
The density of gas is more complicated than solids because gases are highly affected by temperature and pressure. This lesson will lead you through two equations to calculate the density of a gas.

5. Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures: Calculating Partial & Total Pressures
In this lesson, you will learn how gases behave when they are mixed together and how to use Dalton's law of partial pressures to calculate partial and total pressures of gases. You will also learn how to use this information to explain how to find the partial pressure of a gas collected over water.

6. The Boltzmann Distribution: Temperature and Kinetic Energy of Gases
Gas particles are always moving around at random speeds and in random directions. This makes it difficult to determine what any one particle is doing at a given time. Luckily, the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution provides some help with this.

7. Diffusion and Effusion: Graham's Law
Have you ever been in a room where someone has put on perfume or scented lotion and a few minutes later you are able to smell it? What causes you to be able to smell something from so far away? In this lesson, we are going to use the kinetic molecular theory of gases to explain some of their behaviors and determine how we can compare the speeds of different gases.

8. Molar Volume: Using Avogadro's Law to Calculate the Quantity or Volume of a Gas
Have you ever wondered why a balloon expands when you blow it up? How something as light as air is able to exert a force large enough to inflate a balloon? In this lesson, you will learn about the relationship between the volume of a container filled with a gas and the number of gas particles that container holds. This relationship is known as Avogadro's Law.

9. Boyle's Law: Gas Pressure and Volume Relationship
Have you ever wondered how an air powered water gun works? It uses the fantastic properties of gases to make a summer day more enjoyable! In this lesson, we will be discussing Boyle's Law and the relationship between pressure and volume of a gas.

10. Charles' Law: Gas Volume and Temperature Relationship
In this lesson, we will discover why the wind blows and what causes a hot air balloon to rise, a couple of the applications of Charles' Law that explain the relationship between the volume and temperature of a gas.

11. Gay-Lussac's Law: Gas Pressure and Temperature Relationship
You may know that you aren't supposed to put an aerosol can in a fire because it could explode, but do you know why? In this lesson, we will explain Gay-Lussac's law, which shows the relationship between the temperature and pressure of a gas.

12. The Ideal Gas Law and the Gas Constant
Have you ever wondered why the pressure in your car's tires is higher after you have been driving a while? In this lesson, we are going to discuss the law that governs ideal gases and is used to predict the behavior of real gases: the ideal gas law.

13. Using the Ideal Gas Law: Calculate Pressure, Volume, Temperature, or Quantity of a Gas
In another lesson, you learned that the ideal gas law is expressed as PV = nRT. In this video lesson, we'll go one step further, examining how to rearrange the equation to solve for a missing variable when the others are known.

14. Real Gases: Deviation From the Ideal Gas Laws
The ideal gas law is used to describe the behavior of ideal gases, but sometimes the conditions are such that gases behave differently. When this is the case we can use the van der Waals equation to describe the behavior of real gases under these non-ideal conditions.

15. Real Gases: Using the Van der Waals Equation
To understand real gas behavior we use the van der Waals equation. This allows us to account for the volume and attractive forces of gas molecules. In this video lesson you'll see this put into action, and understand how it is different from the ideal gas law.

16. Converting 0 Fahrenheit to Celsius: Steps & Tutorial
Different areas of the world use different temperature scales, and it can be helpful to know how to make temperature conversions. In this lesson, learn about the foundations of the two temperature scales and how to convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius.
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Other Chapters
Other chapters within the High School Physical Science: Help and Review course
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- Physical Science - The Periodic Table: Help and Review
- Physical Science - Understanding Chemical Bonding: Help and Review
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- Help & Review for Chemical Reactions, Acids & Bases in Physical Science
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- Physical Science - Understanding Motion: Help and Review
- Physical Science - Force, Motion, and Newton's Laws: Help and Review
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