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The Chemical Educator
ISSN: 1430-4171 (electronic version)
Abstract Volume 30
(2025) pp 46-49
The Molecular Speed Distribution of Maxwell and Some Routine Probability
Iain L. MacDonald
Centre for Actuarial Research, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, iain.macdonald@uct.ac.za
Received November 18, 2024. Accepted February 07, 2025.
Published: 18 March 2025
Abstract. We demonstrate here the close links between some ideas in probability and the properties of the molecular speed distribution of Maxwell and Boltzmann. In the two-dimensional case we show how the exponential probability distribution can be used to arrive at the median speed with little effort. In the three-dimensional case we show how the mode, median, mean and root-mean-square of the speed can all be found by using some basic tools from probability. As a numerical illustration, we consider the molecular speed of argon. We include in that illustration some very brief R code to show how useful R can be in finding numerical properties of probability distributions.
Key Words: In the Classroom; physical chemistry
(*) Corresponding author. (E-mail: iain.macdonald@uct.ac.za)
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