Dalton's law of partial pressures
Ley de las presiones parciales de Dalton
- Date
- 1801-1802 · confidence high
- Place
- Manchester, England
- Credited to
- John Dalton
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
John Dalton observed that, in a mixture of non-reacting gases, the total pressure equals the sum of the partial pressures each gas would exert alone if it occupied the whole volume, an empirical result that shortly afterward led him to formulate his atomic theory.
Dalton published this law in 1802 in the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester; he himself noted that this work led him to conceive the atomic idea.
What it led to
- quantitative understanding of gas mixtures
- basis for treating ideal gases in mixtures
- a direct path toward Dalton's atomic theory