Chamber No. 172 · A demonstration in chance
Kinetic A distribution born from collisions — every particle starts at one speed, and chance does the rest.
Four thousand particles, launched at exactly the same speed, do nothing but bounce off one another. No rule tells them how fast to be. Yet within seconds their speeds fan out into the same lopsided bell every gas obeys.
Speed distributionThermalised
0Speed →fast
measured
Maxwell–Boltzmann
Particles
4,000
Collisions / s
—
Mean speed v̄
—
Most likely v̂
—
Collisions hold the bell steady. Its width is the temperature.
Colour is speed — cold blue → hot orange.
Index·How it was made
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