The Secret Panel: Deriving the Ideal Gas Law

1. Gas molecules are moving in random directions in the sample. (The ideal gas law would not hold if, for example, the gas molecules were all moving from left to right in the container.)
2. Interactions between gas molecules can be neglected because the average distance between molecules is so large in a gas. (In some gases, attractions or repulsions between molecules are unusually large, but this typically produces only a few percent deviation from the ideal gas law.)
3. The average energy of gas particles is proportional to the temperature of the gas: average( .5mv² ) = temp * a constant.