How did Avogadro count his number?

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How did Avogadro count his number?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It was very simple, he did not do that. Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856) proposed in 1811 that the volume of a gas at a given temperature and pressure is proportional to the number of atoms or molecules in the gas regardless of the nature of the gas. The constant that later would get his name was never measured during his lifetime.

The principle can be useful even if you do not know what number of molecules results in a specific volume. If you burn 2 H2 + O2 = 2 H20 the number of molecules is reduced to 2/3 of the original number and the volume will decrease by that amount when the pressure and temperature return to the same value.

The name of the constant was confined by Jean Perrin in 1909

This measurement was done by by Josef Loschmidt in 1865, it was technically another constant but you can calculate the avogradis constant from it. This is after Avogrado had died.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro_constant#First_measurements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro_constant#First_measurements)

Jean Perrin determined the constant in multiple ways and got the Nobel Prize in physics in 1926 largely because of it. The award ceremony speech described in part how it was done [https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1926/ceremony-speech/](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1926/ceremony-speech/)

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