GasSimTM is a gas law modeling and simulation tool. It is a web app that is freely available and intended for undergraduate and high-school students in chemistry or physics courses.
GasSim is designed to serve as a virtual lab that students can use to experiment with and develop a deeper understanding of ideal and real gas laws. Students can also compare the ideal gas behavior to two real gas models that are more realistic.
GasSim is listed in the
MERLOT and LearnPlatform databases as an online science education tool, and is also available through the
LibreTexts
open-access textbook project.
Features:
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GasSim comes with a database of properties for 76 gases, including elements, inorganic compounds, hydrocarbons, and organic compounds. Each simulation run is for a specific gas selected by the user.
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GasSim provides a simple interface that allows the user to vary the temperature, volume or the number of moles of a selected gas, and evaluates the pressure as a function of the chosen simulation variable. These three independent variables represent the three ways that a confined gas can be manipulated in an actual lab: by heating/cooling the gas; by compressing/uncompressing the gas (for example, by using a piston); by adding/removing gas molecules (for example, by using a syringe).
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The simulator then computes the pressure of the gas as a function of the simulation variable, using three different gas models: the ideal gas model, the van der Waals real gas model, and the Peng-Robinson real gas model.
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Simulation results are provided in both graphical and tabular forms.
Accessing and using the tool:
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ClimateSim is web-based and hosted on the cloud.
There is nothing to install on the user's computer and any web browser will do
for accessing the tool. The tool can be accessed at gassim.net .