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
Base conditions Base conditions Base conditions, also known as standard conditions, consist of a specified absolute pressure and temperature. To ensure accuracy, it is important to refer to base conditions when measuring the volume of a sample of liquid or gas. This applies to both static measurement and flow measurement. The density of both gases and liquids depends on the pressure and temperature of the fluid. Thus volumes measured in cold conditions or in pressurised conditions will be lower than the same mass of fluid at warmer or depressurised conditions. This fact gives rise to the necessity of choosing a benchmark pressure