The perfect gas equation of state PV=NkT is manifestly incapable of describing actual gases at low temperatures, since they undergo a discontinuous change of volume and become liquids. In the 1870’s...The perfect gas equation of state PV=NkT is manifestly incapable of describing actual gases at low temperatures, since they undergo a discontinuous change of volume and become liquids. In the 1870’s, the Dutch physicist Van der Waals came up with an improvement: a gas law that recognized the molecules interacted with each other. He put in two parameters to mimic this interaction.
