Day 2: Gases

Question 1

What moves between the syringes?

Gases exist, take up space.

Question 2

Why is it hard to squeeze a stopped up syringe?

Lecture on the properties of gases. (They are far apart and, at room temperature, they are very fast.)

Question 3

When someone walks into a room, you can see them right away, you can hear them right away, but you do not smell them right away. In fact, sometimes we can't really where a smell is coming from. How does smell travel?

Continuing lecture on the properties of gases. (They are far apart, very fast, and they bump into each other - so they travel in straight segments ... but millions of segments long.)

Question 4

What affects the speed and pressure of gases? What might a "law" be like here? What do the particles know?

A law. (The hotter a gas, the faster its pieces are moving. No more no less.)

Afternoon task: unpacking the mathematical statement of physical laws - what we mean when we write PV = NkT. Playing with the PhET if possible.

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