The kinetic molecular theory is a group of postulates describing how gasses behave. They described how the “perfect” gas should behave, allowing us to make assumptions in our calculations. However, as you will learn later, real gasses do not always follow these rules.
1. Gasses contain lots of gas particles traveling in continuous, random, straight line motion.
2. Compared to the size of their container, gas particles are extremely small, so the volume of the gas particles themselves is negligible.
3. When gas particles collide, energy is conserved.
4. The attractive and repulsive forces between gas particles are negligible. Gas particles only truly interact via collisions.
5. The average kinetic energy of a gas is proportional to its absolute temperature (in Kelvin).
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