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Forums
Physics
Classical Physics
Thermodynamics
Collision time interval of a gas molecule with wall of container
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[QUOTE="jbriggs444, post: 6854112, member: 422467"] What are we trying to calculate? If we were trying to calculate the average force of the molecule on the wall [B]during each collision [/B]then we would take ##\Delta t## as the duration of a representative collision. If we are trying to calculate the average force of the molecule on the wall [B]over an extended period of time [/B]then we take ##\Delta t## as the average force over a representative cycle. The text book is trying to motivate the idea of "pressure" in a fluid by modelling the fluid as a bunch of tiny bouncing balls. For this purpose, they do not care about how rapidly momentum is being transferred between fluid and wall over some tiny collision interval during which the force is much higher than average. They want to calculate how much momentum is transferred during a representative time interval. [/QUOTE]
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Forums
Physics
Classical Physics
Thermodynamics
Collision time interval of a gas molecule with wall of container
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