Gas Properties

When studying physics, the states of matter are one of the first subject that you learn about. While the concept is very easy to grasp, it may be difficult at times to understand all the properties of liquids, solids, gases or plasma and how various substances react or change their state when influenced by external factors.

The best way to study such phenomena is directly through laboratory experiments. Or, you could use a simple computer simulation like Gas Properties.

From this animated Java application’s interface you get to pump gas into a closed chamber. You can literally see the tiny gas molecules as they move around, bouncing off the walls and off each other. But before or after you start pumping gas, there are many variables you can modify.

First, you can choose one constant parameter, that can be either the volume of the chamber, the pressure or the temperature; or you can just choose “None” and adjust any of them manually. Pump a heavy species of gas in the chamber, a light one or both. Adjust the volume of the chamber just by dragging a wall, and you can even take off the lid.

Fun fact: if the pressure in the chamber gets too high, then the lid will blow off. You can easily do this by turning the heat up. If you turn it down, the gas particles will obviously cool down and stop moving almost entirely (though you won’t see how they actually turn into liquids or solids).

Personally, I would have loved to be able to add different types of gases to see exactly how each element behaves. But that being said, Gas Properties is far from limited. There are many tools available that measure the exact data of your experiment in real time, like the number of molecules left in the chamber, their average speed or the pressure inside the chamber. There are even energy histograms that display different particle statistics.

Considering the fact that Gas Properties was made for use in an educational environment, it can certainly be considered a tool that will be helpful to many physics teachers and students.