Why does temperature increases proportionaly to pressure?

Question

I know PV = nRT, but what exactly is happening that explains this relation?

In: 3

Answer 1

There’s two ways to think about it. For both you need to know that temperature is a measure of average kinetic energy of the particles in a substance.

If you think of pressure as N/m^2 , a force acting on an area. Since higher temperature means the particles are moving faster, that mean when they hit something like the edge of a container, they hit it harder because they are moving faster. Thus a larger force is exerted on the surface area of the container.

If you think of pressure as J/m^3 , an amount of energy per volume, then my increasing the temperature increases pressure because you are increasing the emount of energy in the system.