They may be readily calculated for usual atoms and molecules, at not very high temperatures (say the room temperature of \(\sim 25\) meV), because in these conditions, \(\varepsilon_k’ >> T\) for most...They may be readily calculated for usual atoms and molecules, at not very high temperatures (say the room temperature of \(\sim 25\) meV), because in these conditions, \(\varepsilon_k’ >> T\) for most their internal degrees of freedom, including the electronic and vibrational ones. (The typical energy of the lowest electronic excitations is of the order of a few eV, and that of the lowest vibrational excitations is only an order of magnitude lower.) As a result, these degrees of freedom are “fr…
The most probable distribution of velocities of particles in a gas is given by Equation 7.2.9. Thus we expect the distribution function for velocities to be as shown in Equation 7.3.1. This is known a...The most probable distribution of velocities of particles in a gas is given by Equation 7.2.9. Thus we expect the distribution function for velocities to be as shown in Equation 7.3.1. This is known as the Maxwell distribution. Maxwell arrived at this by an ingenious argument many years before the derivation we gave in the last section was worked out.
