Determining the Heat Capacity Ratio of Air from 'Almost Adiabatic' Compressions

摘要

In this paper we demonstrate that the observed discrepancy between the measured and expected values of the heat capacity ratioγ= C_pIC_V for air obtained using the PASCO Adiabatic Gas Law Apparatus1 is due primarily to the finite compression time in the experiment. We devised an empirical method for obtaining a more accurate value of γusing this apparatus, which should be adaptable to other methods of measuringγthat use approximately adiabatic processes.