This article was co-authored by Bess Ruff, MA. Bess Ruff is a Geography PhD student at Florida State University. She received her MA in Environmental Science and Management from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2016. She has conducted survey work for marine spatial planning projects in the Caribbean and provided research support as a graduate fellow for the Sustainable Fisheries Group.
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Charles's Law states that the volume of an ideal gas changes proportionally to the temperature of that gas, given that pressure and amount of gas present are held constant. The equation for Charles's law can be expressed as V1/T1=V2/T2. In other words, if a balloon is filled with air, it will shrink if cooled and expand if heated. This happens because the air inside the balloon, which is a gas, takes up a smaller volume when it is cool, and takes up a larger volume when it is heated.