Kinetic Theory

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2019

⏱️ 52 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how scientists sought to understand the properties of gases and the relationship between pressure and volume, and what that search unlocked. Newton theorised that there were static particles in gases that pushed against each other all the harder when volume decreased, hence the increase in pressure. Those who argued that molecules moved, and hit each other, were discredited until James Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann used statistics to support this kinetic theory. Ideas about atoms developed in tandem with this, and it came as a surprise to scientists in C20th that the molecules underpinning the theory actually existed and were not simply thought experiments. The image above is of Ludwig Boltzmann from a lithograph by Rudolf Fenzl, 1898 With Steven Bramwell Professor of Physics at University College London Isobel Falconer Reader in History of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews and Ted Forgan Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Birmingham Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:05.0	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:07.5	There's a reading list to go with it on our website,
0:09.6	and you can get news about our programs
0:11.5	if you follow us on Twitter at BBC in our time. I hope you
0:15.2	enjoy the programs. Hello in 1662 Robert Boyle observed that when the
0:20.2	volume of a gas goes up the pressure goes down and when the volume of the gas goes up, the pressure goes up. The most popular explanation
0:27.6	for that, endorsed by Newton, was that there were tiny static particles in the gas, pushing each other apart and the more they were squeezed
0:35.0	the higher the pressure.
0:36.7	What though if the atoms were not static but moving quickly, what would flow from that?
0:41.6	A lot, it's turned out out and those who developed this moving kinetic
0:45.1	theory of gases helped unlock much of modern physics including temperature, the workings of the
0:50.2	sun and quantum theory. We need to discuss Kinetic Theory
0:54.0	Isabel Faukner, reader in the history of mathematics at the University of St Andrews,
0:58.3	Ted Faugen,
0:59.3	Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Birmingham,
1:02.1	and Stephen Brownwell, Professor of Physics at the University of Birmingham and Stephen Brownwell, Professor of Physics at University
1:05.0	College London. Steve Brownwell, can you summarize what the kinetic theory of gases is and why it matters?
1:12.4	Yes, so the kinetic theory of gases is and why it matters. Yeah, so the kinetic theory of gases is a very simple model for a gas.
1:18.0	The idea that a gas consists of atoms or molecules that fly around in empty space in the vacuum, they bump into each other, they
1:25.8	bump into other objects.
1:27.8	And the idea is that using Newton's laws of motion, you can then calculate all the properties of a gas from that
	...

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