In 1873 the Dutch physicist Johannes van der Waals derived an equation that not only included the force of attraction between gas particles but also corrected for the fact that the volume of these particles becomes a significant fraction of the total volume of the gas at high pressures. The van der Waals equation is used today to give a better fit to the experimental data of real gases than can be obtained with the ideal gas equation. But that wasn't van der Waals's goal. He was trying to develop a model that would explain the behavior of liquids by including terms that reflected the size of the atoms or molecules in the liquid and the strength of the bonds between these atoms or molecules. The weak intermolecular bonds in liquids and solids are therefore often called van der Waals forces .
Many molecules contain bonds that fall between the extremes of ionic and covalent bonds.
The difference between the electronegativities of the atoms in these molecules is large enough that the electrons aren't shared equally, and yet small enough that the electrons aren't drawn exclusively to one of the atoms to form positive and negative ions. The bonds in these molecules are said to be polar , because they have positive and negative ends, or poles, and the molecules are often said to have a dipole moment . HCl molecules, for example, have a dipole moment because the hydrogen atom has a slight positive charge and the chlorine atom has a slight negative charge. Because of the force of attraction between oppositely charged particles, there is a small dipole-dipole force of attraction between adjacent HCl molecules. The electrons on an argon atom are distributed homogeneously around the nucleus of the atom.