GAY-LUSSAC, (JOSEPH). - THE "GAY-LUSSAC LAW" OF EXPANDING GASES ANNOUNCED.

Recherches sur la dilatation des gaz et des vapeurs, lues à l'Institut National, le 11 pluvióse an 10.

Paris, Chez Fuchs, An X, (1802). Contemp. hcalf. Spine gilt. Top of spine with wear. A few scratches to binding. In: "Annales de Chimie, ou Recueil de Mémoires concernant la Chemie" Tome 43. 332,(4) pp., 2 engraved plates (the entire volume offered). Gay-Lussac's paper: pp. 137-175. The first 20 leaves a bit brownspotted, otherwise with a few marginal brownspots. 1 leaf (pp. 197-98) torn with loss of some letters. Gay-Lussac's paper fine and clean.

First printing of this extremely important discovery, in which Gay-Lussac first formulated the law, Gay-Lussac's Law, stating that if the mass and pressure of a gas are held constant then gas volume increases linearly as the temperature rises. This is sometimes written as V = k T, where k is a constant dependent on the type, mass, and pressure of the gas and T is temperature on an absolute scale. (In terms of the ideal gas law, k = n R / P.).

"In 1802 he (Gay-Lussac) showed that different gases all expanded by equal amounts with rise in temperature. Charles had made the same discovery some years earlier but had not published it; the credit therefore belongs to Gay-Lussac at least as much, and probably more. This was an extremely importent discovery, which Avogadro was to use within the decade to formulate hid long-neglected hypothesis that equal volumes of different gases at equal temperatures contained equal numbers of particles."(Asimov).

Magie "A Source Book in Physics", p.165-172 - Leicester & Klickstein "A Source Book of Chemistry", p. 374-379. - Parkinson "Breakthroughs" 1802 C.

The volume contains other importent papers in chemistry by Humphrey Davy (first French translation of his announcement of the finding of "Laughing Gas" (Nitrous Oxide), Parmentier, Vauquelin, Clement et Desormes, Thenard, Guyton, Chenivix

Order-nr.: 43078