ABSTRACT
In 1662, Robert Boyle discovered that the volume (V) of a gas in a closed container is inversely proportional to its pressure (P), as long as the temperature (T) is constant. Much later (1802), when temperature could be accurately measured, Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac was able to show that the constant in Boyle’s law (PV = constant) is proportional to the temperature. Sometime later, Benoit Clapeyron wrote the general gas law:
PV nRT= , (5.1)
where n is the number of moles and R is the gas constant. In 1859, Rudolf Clausius and James Clerk Maxwell developed the kinetic theory of gases. The latter derived a distribution law for the kinetic energy of gas molecules. Ludwig Boltzmann developed the subject of statistical distributions. Scientists like Max Planck and Willard Gibbs also contributed a lot to the development of statistical physics in the latter part of the nineteenth century. A milestone was reached when, in 1875, Boltzmann de›ned statistical entropy.
