Saturday, January 30, 2016

thermodynamics - Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, average speed in one direction



Consider an ideal gas obeying the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution i.e


f(v)=(m2πkBT)3/2exp(mv22kBT).


The probability distribution in 3D velocity space (v2=v2x+v2y+v2z). How might you determine the average speed the particles are moving at, |vz|, in one direction?


Additionally if my ideal gas is now confined to a hemisphere in velocity space i.e we have the conditions vx,vy and 0vz but it still has a Maxwell Boltzmann velocity distribution (except I think the normalization factor on f(v) should change) then what is the average speed, or velocity, in the z direction vz, will this be the same as |vz| from the previous answer?




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