Hello, Zoey,
I just responded to another of your gas law problems. It has a more thorough explanation than the one I'll give here. Please use that one to help explain the specific steps.
In this problem we are taking fixed molar amount of nitrogen and reducing both pressure and temperature. Increasing pressure should increase the volume, but decreasing temperature will reduce volume. Which one will win, and what is the final volume.
We'll use P1V1/T1 = P2V2/T2
Set up a table with the values:
Remember than we need to convert C to K by adding 273.
Now rearrange the above equation so that V2, the unknown, is isolated.
V2 = V1(T2/T1)(P1/P2)
Imagine what number we'd expect V2 to be, based on the ratios of T and P I've set up in the equation. (T2/T1) is about 1. (P1/P2) is around 1.2. So we'd expect V2 to be around 20% higher than V1.
Plug the numbers into the equation. I get V2 = 59.6L, about a 20% increase.
Bob
