- #1
aochider
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I've been a bit confused about when/why an expanding gas cools.
Here is what I've heard so far:
So, I'm mostly struggling to visualize 2 and 3 above. Why does Feynman say that expansion will decrease temperature? Also, why was the uncompressed air cooler? I'm trying to visualize those on a molecular level, but it's hard to see why things would get cooler in those cases.
Thanks!
Here is what I've heard so far:
- Refrigeration systems work based on using heat that is used merely to break attraction of molecules of liquids at their boiling point (eg, freon released through an expansion valve gets cooler because particles break the attraction between the freon molecules, so some energy is lost to that "breaking" process, resulting in less KE in the particles involved and thus a lower temp). A common explanation of this, however, is that an expanding gas cools, not the boiling point bit.
- In Feynman's lectures he talks about how if you compress a gas, you are imparting energy onto the gas's particles and the KE and temperature rises (ie, a piston/compressor is "hitting" the particles faster). Then he says that expansion lowers the temperature. "So, under slow compression, a gas will increase in temperature, and under slow expansion it will decrease in temperature."
- The OP in this thread talks about how the air is measurably cooler after compressing, cooling, and then releasing it. https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=549795
- The ideal gas law seems to *not* imply a temperature decrease in the above scenarios because pressure decreases as volume increases, so T should stay the same. But maybe I'm wrong about this because maybe p and V change at different rates which causes T to noticeably fluctuate.
So, I'm mostly struggling to visualize 2 and 3 above. Why does Feynman say that expansion will decrease temperature? Also, why was the uncompressed air cooler? I'm trying to visualize those on a molecular level, but it's hard to see why things would get cooler in those cases.
Thanks!