What is the Force Exerted by a Gas on a Container Wall?

[auslmar]

The problem I'm working on is verbatim as follows:

"A sealed cubical container 20.0 cm on a side contains three times Avogadro's number of molecules at a temperature of 20.0 degrees Celsius. Find the force exerted by the gas on one of the walls of the container."

So, I would assume that I need to use the formula F = N/3([m * (v^{2} ]/d) , but I'm not seeing the big picture.

Maybe this is a simple problem and I just can't see the forest for the trees, but for some reason, I'm at a loss.

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance,

-A. Martin

 

[auslmar]

In my understanding, N = Avogadro's constant, m = mass of one mole of the gas, v = velocity of one molecule of the gas, and d = the length of one side of the container, which in this case is 20 cm. Please correct me if I am mistaken about this or if I'm approaching this problem the wrong way.

But, the book provides neither the mass of one mole of the gas or the velocity of the gas. I suppose if they had mentioned which gas it was, I could use the periodic table and other charts to get these values.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[auslmar]

I found my answer key.

It says the correct answer is 36544 N, so this implies that they are looking for a real numerical value in Newtons rather a symbolic representation.