Final answer:
CO2 may behave as an ideal gas under conditions of high temperatures and low pressures, as per the ideal gas law. By graphing the relationships between P, V, and T and analyzing the linearity in accordance with the ideal gas law, students can determine if CO2 exhibits ideal gas behavior.
Step-by-step explanation:
The concept of an ideal gas is a fundamental assumption in the study of gas behaviors in chemistry. An ideal gas is a theoretical gas composed of a set of randomly moving, non-interacting point particles. The behavior of an ideal gas is well-described by the ideal gas law, which relates the pressure (P), volume (V), temperature (T), and number of moles (n) of a gas with the equation PV = nRT, where R is the universal gas constant. In practice, no real gas behaves ideally at all conditions, but many gases behave very closely to the ideal model at high temperatures and low pressures where intermolecular forces and effects due to the volume of the gas molecules themselves are negligible.
In experiments to determine if CO2 exhibits ideal behavior, students would create a graph based on collected data for pressure, volume, and temperature. They would look for a linear relationship between the variables when plotted in accordance with the ideal gas law. If the graph shows that the gas conforms to the expected behavior from the ideal gas equation (straight line on a PV vs nT graph), it suggests that CO2 is behaving as an ideal gas under those conditions. If the same experiment is conducted with half as much gas in an identical container, the interactions between the molecules of the gas and the container walls should not significantly change the conclusion regarding the gas's ideality.