Nonideal gas behavior: Boyle’s Law
Boyle’s law predicts that at very high pressures, a gas
volume becomes extremely small and approaches
zero. This cannot be, however, because the molecules
themselves occupy space and are practically
incompressible.
The effect of finite molecular size
In (a), a significant fraction of the
container is empty space and the
gas can still be compressed to a
smaller volume.
In (b), the molecules occupy most
of the available space. The volume
of the system is only slightly
greater than the total volume of
the molecules.