Boyle's law, also referred to as the Boyle–Mariotte law, or Mariotte's law (especially in France), is an experimental gas law that describes how the pressure of a gas tends to decrease as the volume of the container increases. A modern statement of Boyle's law is:
The absolute pressure exerted by a given mass of an ideal gas is inversely proportional to the volume it occupies if the temperature and amount of gas remain unchanged within a closed system.
Mathematically, Boyle's law can be stated as:
or
where P is the pressure of the gas, V is the volume of the gas, and k is a constant.
The equation states that the product of pressure and volume is a constant for a given mass of confined gas and this holds as long as the temperature is constant. For comparing the same substance under two different sets of conditions, the law can be usefully expressed as:
P
1
V
1
=
P
2
V
2
.
{\displaystyle P_{1}V_{1}=P_{2}V_{2}.}
This equation shows that, as volume increases, the pressure of the gas decreases in proportion. Similarly, as volume decreases, the pressure of the gas increases. The law was named after chemist and physicist Robert Boyle, who published the original law in 1662.