Question

Maxwell boltzman distribution

I just have a small doubt.. in the graph of probability vs velocity of a gas at a given temperature.. the value is zero for zero velocity and then zero only at v = infinity.. what happened to speed limit c?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxGHbnwqd14

he mentions that in this video at around 36 mins 10 seconds

Answer 1

First it is a classical concept and c was not know to be a limiting speed. Originally Maxwell developed the distribution and later Boltzmann put it on a more firm basis. Maxwell's original derivation did not contain any physics per-se. Boltzmann correlated it with temperature.