Question #d190a
1 Answer
Feb 20, 2017
It's not the law that's called ideal, it's the gas it describes.....
Explanation:
An "ideal gas" is a theoretical gas whose component atoms have no interactions between one another, and which take up negligible space.
In practise, no real gas truly has such properties (although things like noble gasses come close, and things like oxygen and nitrogen are not far off).
However, by assuming that a real gas behaves like this, it makes the mathematics that describes its behaviour a lot simpler.
But it is the "ideal gas law" because it describes the behaviour of an "ideal gas" - the description "ideal" applies to the gas, not the law.
