Final answer:
The variable corrected for due to the attraction between gas molecules at non-ideal conditions is pressure. This is accounted for by the 'a' constant in the van der Waals equation. The correct answer is b. pressure.
Step-by-step explanation:
The variable corrected for because gas molecules are attracted to each other at non-ideal conditions is pressure. When dealing with non-ideal gas behavior, the van der Waals equation includes corrections for molecular volume and molecular attractions.
Specifically, the constants in the van der Waals equation, 'a' and 'b', account for these non-ideal factors; 'a' refers to the intermolecular forces and is involved in a correction to the pressure term, while 'b' refers to the finite size of the molecules and is involved in a correction to the volume term.
At public_html pressures, the correction for intermolecular attraction (a) is more significant, and it adds a term to the pressure of the gas to account for these attractive forces.
This adjustment is positive because the attractive forces would otherwise cause the pressure to be lower than predicted by the ideal gas law. In contrast, at high pressures, the molecular volume becomes more important, resulting in a subtractive correction to the volume (b), reflecting the space occupied by the molecules themselves.