Talk:1 E4 K

Miscalculated Temp?

11,604.5 K (11,331.35 °C): temperature where the average kinetic energy of a molecule is 1 eV

Is this accurate? It seems incorrect to me. The Boltzmann constant article says that:

k = 1.380 6505(24) × 10−23 joules/kelvin

This, indeed, would correspond to a temperature of (1 eV / k) = (1.602e-19 / 1.381e-23) = 11600 K.

However, this doesn't take into account the heat capacity of the material. Different molecules will have different energies at the same temperature. For a monatomic, with three degrees of freedom, the energy is E = 1.5kT per atom. Bigger particles carry yet more kinetic energy per unit temperature. Thus, the above temperature is very misleading. It is being removed... and replaced with the relevant temperature 7736K (temperature at which a monatomic ideal gas has a kinetic energy of 1 eV... equals 11604 K/1.5).

--Obsidian-fox 08:46, 11 February 2006 (UTC)