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Physics
Classical Physics
Electromagnetism
Maxwell distributions and average, RMS, and most probable speeds
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[QUOTE="rtareen, post: 6376070, member: 671018"] Thanks for your response. I appreciate your effort! You say that P(v)dv is the probability of a random molecule having a speed between v and dv. As you mentioned before this probability is unitless. But what about the book's interpretation? It says that P(v)dv gives the fraction of molecules that have speeds in that range. I guess these could be the same thing. Actually now that I think about it, it probably is. You say P(v) is called a [I]probability density function[/I]. I did a little reading and learned that the dependent variable P always have reciprocal units of whatever it is a function of. This makes sense whenever you think of P as a fraction or a probability. But i still don't really know what P is. Let's say you plug in v = 200 m\s and you get P(v) = ##10^{-3}##s/m. What does P by itself actually represent? Does it have any meaning? I don't know anything about the expectation function like you suggested I might have, but assuming it is true then the formulas for average and rms speed actually make sense! Thank you! And as for the most probable speed, If we interpret P(v) as probability, whch i don't know if it correct, then I can see how the most probable speed occurs at the critical point. Maybe you or someone else can clear this up by explaining what P is. [/QUOTE]
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Forums
Physics
Classical Physics
Electromagnetism
Maxwell distributions and average, RMS, and most probable speeds
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