- #1
Dburghoff
- 16
- 0
I'm trying to do some thought experiments involving ionized gas. More specifically, I'm thinking about ionized air. For the sake of argument, let's just imagine that we're ionizing the air by sticking a pin out of a Van de Graaff generator that's positively charged.
My main question is this: how do the gas molecules actually behave? Do they keep the same rms speed as their non-ionized counterparts? The moment that they're ionized by the needle, I'd imagine that they're accelerated in all directions (except for towards the VDG generator), as they are repelling one another, so would this change its rms speed? Overall, I'm very confused over the whole subject.
My main question is this: how do the gas molecules actually behave? Do they keep the same rms speed as their non-ionized counterparts? The moment that they're ionized by the needle, I'd imagine that they're accelerated in all directions (except for towards the VDG generator), as they are repelling one another, so would this change its rms speed? Overall, I'm very confused over the whole subject.