Is the mean free path the mean of a distribution?
Classical Physics
2017-07-17 v2 Statistical Mechanics
Abstract
We bring attention to the fact that Maxwell's mean free path for a dilute hard-sphere gas in thermal equilibrium, , which is ordinarily obtained by multiplying the average speed by the average time between collisions, is also the statistical mean of the distribution of free path lengths in such a gas.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1309.1197,
title = {Is the mean free path the mean of a distribution?},
author = {Steve T. Paik},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.1197},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
19 pages, 5 figures; added discussion of results for hard-sphere gas; improvements to text to increase clarity; published version