Is hydrogen is an ideal gas or not under certain circumstances?

S

Sponkers

New member
If I had a 1 mole sample of hydrogen gas at 1 degree Celsius, in a 1 liter container, would I use Van der Waals equation or the ideal gas equation? I had always thought a gas was either one or the other, but this prompt I have on my homework suggests that hydrogen gas may be more or less ideal under certain conditions.

I would say that because it's not room temp it wouldn't be ideal, but that's really just a educated guess. Maybe I'm totally off.

So is hydrogen an ideal gas under these circumstances or not?
 
No, the word "Ideal" in the ideal gas law refers to the fact that we don't take into account the insignificant intermolecular forces of gas particles. This however becomes very significant as the pressure increases or the temperature decreases. This is because those two changes in the environment can make the molecules interact with each other more. H2 gas can possibly create an induced dipole moment aka London dispersion force.

To me that seems like a high enough pressure and low enough temperature to warrant Van der Waals equation.
 
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