Graham's law has come to denote an important class of finely divided materials. Around the time Graham did his work, the concept of molecular weight was being established largely through the measurements of gases. Daniel Bernoulli suggested in 1738 in his book Hydrodynamica that heat increases in proportion to the velocity, and thus kinetic energy, of gas particles. Italian physicist Amedeo Avogadro also suggested in 1811 that equal volumes of different gases contain equal numbers of molecules. Thus, the relative molecular weights of two gases are equal to the ratio of weights of equal volumes of the gases. Avogadro's insight together with
Standard conditions for temperature and pressure flow (the volumes of gases vary significantly with temperature and pressure) – standard cubic meters per second (sm3/s), and normal cubic meters per second (nm3/s). However, many technical publications (books, journals, advertisements for equipment and machinery) simply state "standard conditions" without specifying them, often leading to confusion and errors. Good practice always incorporates the reference conditions of temperature and pressure. Before 1918, many professionals and scientists using the metric system of units defined the standard reference conditions of temperature and pressure for expressing gas volumes as being and . During those same years, the most commonly used standard reference conditions