The application of kinetic theory to ideal gases makes the following assumptions:
* The gas consists of very small particles. This smallness of their size is such that the sum of the volume of the individual gas molecules is negligible compared to the volume of the container of the gas. This is equivalent to stating that the average distance separating the gas particles is large compared to their size, and that the elapsed time during a collision between particles and the container's wall is negligible when compared to the time between successive collisions.
* The number of particles is so large that a statistical treatment of the problem is well justified. This assumption is sometimes referred to as the thermodynamic limit.
* The rapidly moving particles constantly collide among themselves and with the walls of the container, and all these collisions are perfectly elastic.
* Interactions (i.e. collisions) between particles are strictly binary and uncorrelated, meaning that there are no three-body (or higher) interactions, and the particles have no memory.
* Except during collisions, the interactions among molecules are negligible. They exert no other forces on one another.
Thus, the dynamics of particle motion can be treated classically, and the equations of motion are time-reversible.
As a simplifying assumption, the particles are usually assumed to have the same mass as one another; however, the theory can be generalized to a mass distribution, with each mass type contributing to the gas properties independently of one another in agreement with Daltons Law of partial pressures. Many of the models predictions are the same whether or not collisions between particles are included, so they are often neglected as a simplifying assumption in derivations (see below).
More modern developments, such as Revised Enskog Theory and the Extended BGK model, relax one or more of the above assumptions. These can accurately describe the properties of dense gases, and gases with internal degrees of freedom, because they include the volume of the particles as well as contributions from intermolecular and intramolecular forces as well as quantized molecular rotations, quantum rotational-vibrational symmetry effects, and electronic excitation. While theories relaxing the assumptions that the gas particles occupy negligible volume and that collisions are strictly elastic have been successful, it has been shown that relaxing the requirement of interactions being binary and uncorrelated will eventually lead to divergent results.