YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio ( WKBN ) — One of the earliest indicators of colder temperatures is low tire pressure in your vehicle, but what causes this phenomenon?
Do you remember anything from your high school chemistry class? That is where today’s lesson comes from.
What causes low tire pressure when it’s cold?
Car and truck tires are filled with air, which is a gas. The temperature and pressure of gases are directly related to each other, which means that when the temperature of the gas increases, so too does the pressure.
When the air temperature cools off in the fall months, the air pressure inside of a tire also decreases, because of this relationship.
The relationship described above is known as Gay-Lussac’s Law, which is named after the French scientist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac. The temperature of a gas is a measure of how fast molecules are moving throughout the gas itself. Higher temperatures mean that the molecules are moving faster, and vice versa…