Carolina® Gas Laws

A helium-filled weather balloon increasing in volume as it rises until it bursts serves as the investigative phenomenon. In part 1, students collect evidence from a series of activities that explore the relationships between the pressure, temperature, and volume of a gas. They make claims about the cause-and-effect relationships they observe between pairs of variables while developing an understanding of Boyle’s, Charles’s, and Gay-Lussac’s gas laws. In part 2, students use the ideal gas law to construct models of one mole of a gas at STP and at 3,000 meters depth in the ocean. In the assessment, students analyze meteorological data and calculate the volume of the weather balloon from the ground to its burst altitude to answer the driving question, “Why does the volume of a weather balloon increase as it rises in the atmosphere?”

Time Requirement
Total, 130 minutes. Teacher prep, 30 minutes. Pre-lab for homework. Investigation part 1, 50 minutes. Investigation part 2 and assessment, 50 minutes.

Digital Resources
Includes 1-year access to digital resources that support 3-dimensional instruction for NGSS. Digital resources may include a teacher manual and student guide, pre-lab activities and setup videos, phenomenon videos, simulations, and post-lab analysis and assessments.

Performance Expectations
HS-PS3-2
HS-PS3-4

Crosscutting Concepts
Cause and Effect

Disciplinary Core Ideas
PS3.A: Definitions of Energy

Science and Engineering Practices
Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions

Learning Objectives

• Observe how changing one variable affects the behavior of a gas.
• Use evidence from observations to explain the relationships between the pressure, volume, and temperature of a gas, then identify the relationship as Boyle’s, Charles’s, or Gay-Lussac’s law.
• Use the ideal gas law to create physical models showing the effect of pressure on one mole of gas.
• Make a claim, supported by evidence, about how changing pressure, volume, and/or temperature affect a gas.

Prerequisite Knowledge and Skills
Students should have a basic understanding of the relationship between volume, pressure, and temperature in gases, as well as familiarity with the kinetic molecular theory.