Kinetic Molecular Theory of Gases Worksheet

1) Name the postulates of the kinetic molecular theory and state whether or not you believe they
do a good job of describing how real gases behave.
(1) Gases consist of very large numbers of tiny spherical particles that are far apart from one
another compared to their size. The particles of a gas may be either atoms or molecules.
The distance between the particles of a gas is much, much greater than the distances
between the particles of a liquid or a solid. Most of the volume of a gas, therefore, is
composed of the empty space between the particles. In fact, the volume of the particles
themselves is considered to be insignificant compared to the volume of the empty space.
(2) Gas particles are in constant rapid motion in random directions. The fast motion of gas
particles gives them a relatively large amount of kinetic energy. Recall that kinetic energy is
the energy that an object possesses because of its motion. The particles of a gas move in
straight-line motion until they collide with another particle or with one of the walls of its
container.
(3) Collisions between gas particles and between particles and the container walls are elastic
collisions. An elastic collision is one in which there is no overall loss of kinetic energy. Kinetic
energy may be transferred from one particle to another during an elastic collision, but there
is no change in the total energy of the colliding particles.
(4) There are no forces of attraction or repulsion between gas particles. Attractive forces are
responsible for particles of a real gas condensing together to form a liquid. It is assumed
that the particles of an ideal gas have no such attractive forces. The motion of each particle
is completely independent of the motion of all other particles.
(5) The average kinetic energy of gas particles is dependent upon the temperature of the gas.
As the temperature of a sample of gas is increased, the speeds of the particles are
increased. This results in an increase in the kinetic energy of the particles. Not all particles of
gas in a sample have the same speed and so they do not have the same kinetic energy. The
temperature of a gas is proportional to the average kinetic energy of the gas particles.

I believe all five postulates do a good job of describing how real gases behave. To support my
answer, I have researched the illustration of the postulates (shown in the figure below), which
consists of a glass plate surrounded by walls mounted on top of three vibrating motors. A
handful of steel ball bearings are placed on top of the glass plate to represent the gas particles.
 When the motors are turned on, the glass plate vibrates, which makes the ball bearings move in
a constant, random fashion (Postulate 2). Each ball moves in a straight line until it collides with
another ball or with the walls of the container (Also Postulate 2). Although collisions are
frequent, the average distance between the ball bearings is much larger than the diameter of
the balls (Postulate 1). There is no force of attraction between the individual ball bearings or
between the ball bearings and the walls of the container (Postulate 4).

The collisions that occur in this illustration are very different from those that occur when a
rubber ball is dropped on the floor. Collisions between the rubber ball and the floor are inelastic,
as shown in the figure below. A portion of the energy of the ball is lost each time it hits the floor
until it eventually rolls to a stop. In the previous illustration, the collisions are perfectly elastic.
The balls have just as much energy after a collision as before (Postulate 3).

At any time, some of the ball bearings on my first illustration are moving faster than others, but
the system can be described by an average kinetic energy. When we increase the "temperature"
of the system by increasing the voltage to the motors, we find that the average kinetic energy of
the ball bearings increases (Postulate 5).

(The only flaw I found, or exception in the postulates, is the assumption that gas molecules do
not attract or repel each other. Attractions and repulsions are negligible when the distance
between molecules is large, but if you can contrive conditions that force the molecules into
close contact so that attractions and repulsions can't be neglected, you will likely see deviations
from ideal behavior.

You would expect that when the gas had a high molar volume, the molecules would be far apart,
and the gas would behave ideally. Conversely, changing conditions to produce a higher density
would bring the molecules closer together, and attractions and repulsions between molecules
might cause deviations from ideal behavior.)

With this illustration and evidence, I can conclude that I believe the postulates of the kinetic
molecular theory do a good job of describing how real gas behaves.

2) Based on the postulates of the kinetic molecular theory, give the conditions of pressure and
temperature that you believe would cause a real gas to best simulate an ideal gas. Explain your
answer.
Conditions of very high temperature and very low pressure will help real gases to simulate ideal
gases.

Let's look at the intermolecular attractions section. These attractions are electrostatic (opposite
charges attracting each other) and depend on the charge difference in the atoms and the distance
between the atoms. As the distance increases, the attractive force decreases. Our goal is to get the
atoms as far apart from each other as possible.

Looking at the Ideal Gas Law we see that:

PV=nRT

Solving for V we get:

V=nRT/P

So to maximize V, we need to increase the Temperature (particles move faster and spread out), and
decrease the Pressure. We could also reduce the number of gas molecules we have, but that's not
always doable.

(Summary: High temperatures ensure that the gas molecules are moving so quickly that there’s not
much time for them to interact with one another, and low pressures ensure that the gas molecules
don’t encounter each other very often.)