Van der Waals equation
Ecuación de Van der Waals
- Date
- 1873 · confidence high
- Place
- University of Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands
- Credited to
- Johannes Diderik van der Waals
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
In his doctoral thesis, van der Waals modified the ideal gas law to account for the finite volume of molecules and the attractive forces between them, producing the first thermodynamic model to treat liquids and gases with a single equation. It earned him the 1910 Nobel Prize in Physics and was key to liquefying hydrogen and helium around 1908.
What it led to
- Prediction of critical-point behavior and phase transitions
- Liquefaction of hydrogen and helium (1908)
- 1910 Nobel Prize in Physics
Built on
- Kinetic theory of gases by Clausius, Maxwell and Boltzmann
- Gibbs's statistical mechanics