Why is the ideal gas law used?

1 Answer
Truong-Son N.
Aug 24, 2016

To introduce you to the easiest case.

Ideal gases have several assumptions, some of them being:

  • They do not react with each other.
  • They collide 100% elastically, so their kinetic energy is retained/conserved.
  • They take up the entire volume of their container, and do not "stick" to their container.
  • They all have the same molar volume #barV = V/n# at STP.

Real gases are significantly more complicated, and not all of them are ideal enough that they follow the ideal gas law. You would see that in their #barV# value.

Later on, you may learn more equations of state that are more complicated than the ideal gas law, like the van der Waals, Redlich-Kwong, and Peng-Robinson equations of state, and those are more suited for real gases.

Related questions
See all questions in Ideal Gas Law
Impact of this question
1286 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License