What is the work for the free expansion of a gas into vacuum?
1 Answer
For an expansion into a vacuum,
Explanation:
For a free expansion into a vacuum, a gas does no work, as there is no resistance on the gas as it expands, i.e.
To say that
If we ignore the part about expanding into a vacuum and just think about the gas expanding, the sign of
For an expansion we know that
The work done by the system should therefore be negative for a regular expansion, as work is done by the system (the gas) onto the surroundings. The opposite is true for a compression (
Note that if you define