Pranav R. answered • 05/25/21
Undergraduate Chemical Engineering Student at UC Berkeley
Kinetic Molecular Theory describes how the velocity of particles affects the rate of collisions between particles. Using and manipulating the Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution curve, which describes the relative amount of particles moving at certain speeds, the curve spreads out as the temperature increases and shrinks as the temperature decreases. We know this because we would expect the particles to move slower at a lower temperatures, and faster at higher temperatures. (Temperature is a measurement of the kinetic energy of a group of particles.) We know that the way that we can define pressure is the number of collisions of the particles with the surface that bounds the system. In the system where the temperature is lower, the particles are generally moving slower, and thus there are less collisions per unit of time with the balloon that encapsulates the gas. The opposite is true for a higher temperature. For a real-life observation/connection, this is why a balloon pops when you hold a lighter to it: when you heat the gas in the balloon, the velocity of the particles increases as the temperature increases which increases the pressure inside of the balloon, until the pressure is too great for the ballon and it pops.
