- [Instructor] So I wanna

talk to you a little more

about the kinetic-molecular

theory of gases.

What this basically says

is that the macroscopic

properties of a gas,

like the pressure or the

volume or the temperature

are just a result of the

microscopic properties

of the gas molecules,

like the position and the

speeds of these molecules.

So v down here is speed.

V up here is volume.

The idea is this gas is made of molecules.

They're flying around

in certain directions.

They have certain speeds

and if you knew those speeds

and you knew the distribution of speeds

and the positions in here,

you could figure out these

macroscopic properties.

What I wanna basically do in this video

is try to figure out

what is the relationship

if we know the microscopic properties,

how could we predict the

macroscopic properties,

like if I knew the speed

of all these molecules,

how could I figure out

what pressure would be
in there or vice versa,

if I knew the temperature of the gas,

could I say what the average speeds are

of these molecules in this gas.

That's what we're gonna do,

but first, we have to

make a few assumptions.

One assumption is that these

molecules don't really interact

and if they do interact,

it would only be because of the collision

and if there is a collision

between these molecules,

we have to assume it's elastic

and kinetic energy will be conserved,

the momentum will be conserved.

Similarly, if one of these molecules

strikes the wall of the container

and has a collision there,

that should also be elastic.

There should be no kinetic energy lost.

So then let's get to it.

Let me just clean that up,

get rid of that and start over up here.

I need to figure out how to

relate a microscopic quantity

to a macroscopic quantity.

Let's just start with speed.

Let's say you got a particle in here,

a molecule moving this

way with some speed.
I'll call it v x since I'm
drawing it in the x direction

and it collides with this wall,

well, that's gonna impart

a force on this wall

and if you get a lot of

these doing that in here,

you'll get a pressure on this wall,

but it's gonna be an elastic collision,

so this particle is gonna bounce backwards

with the same velocity

and let's try to figure out

what force that would exert

'cause if I can figure

out the force on the wall,

I can figure out the pressure

'cause pressure's just force per area.

So Force, yeah, it equals m a,

but it also equals delta P,

the change in momentum

over the change in time.

So this is an alternate way

to write Newton's Second Law.

What would be the change in momentum?

So I'm gonna try to find

the force on this wall,

the change in momentum,

momentum is m v,

and if the mass doesn't change,

then change in momentum is just m delta v

where the V here is speed.

So mass times, sorry, excuse me, velocity.

Mass times change in velocity.

So what would be the change in velocity

for this collision right here,

struck the wall and bounced

back with the same speed?

Some people wanna say

zero 'cause it comes in

with the same speed that it goes out with,

but V is velocity and so,

the change in velocity

is actually two times V

because it came in with V

and left with negative V.

So technically, the change

would be negative two V,

but I'm gonna ignore negatives

'cause I just want the size

of this force on this wall.

So m times two times v x

over delta t

but I don't want delta t in here.

I want an equation of state

that just has pressure

and volume and speeds and stuff like that.

So how can I get rid of delta t?

Well I know the distance in here,

let's just call the side lengths here L.

So see we have a box

of L by L by L to cube.

Well, the time it takes

between collisions,

so there's an impulse here

and delta v right when

this collision takes place
and then this particle
travels over here to the left,

bounces off at this wall

then comes back over to

here, again, hits it.

How long is it between those impacts?

Well, the time it would take

to travel to the left and back,

I know speed is distance per time,

so the time, the delta t,

is just gonna be the distance per speed

and the distance is not just L

'cause it's gonna travel

to this wall and then back.

I wanna know the force

on this wall over here.

I need to figure out how long is it

between collisions with this wall,

so it's gonna be two times L

over the velocity in the x direction.

That's where I can substitute in over here

and I get that F is gonna be m

times two

vx

over

delta t now is two L

over v x

but since I'm dividing

by v x on the bottom,

I moved that up top

and look, I've already got one here,

so I'm just gonna square it.

I can cancel off the twos

and I get that the force on

the wall by this particle

is mass times its velocity

in the x direction squared

divided by L.

I should say this particle

doesn't have to just be

going in the x direction.

It might have some total velocity this way

where the x component

is just a part of it,

but it I just took the x

component of the particle speed,

whatever particle it is
that had some velocity,

the x component, I'd get

the force contribution

to the pressure on this wall over here.

So this is the force

on this wall over here

by one particle, but

I wanna know the force

from all the particles

'cause I wanna get the total pressure,

so how could I do that?

Well, if I want the total

force, I just need to add up

the contributions from all the particles.

So let's say there were other particles,

well they're gonna have the same mass m.

I'm assuming they got

the same gas throughout.
All molecules have the same mass

and the L will be the

same for all of them.

So, the only difference in contribution

will be that some may have

a certain component of
velocity in the x direction.

I'll call this v x one squared

plus there may be some other particle

that has a different component, two,

and there may be some particle

that has a different component, three.

You just have to add all these up.

So I have x v two,

the two references particle two squared

plus v x three, the x

component of particle three's,

velocity squared plus,

I'd keep going to N many times.

I'd keep adding this up until I got

what V x N, the nth

particle, total amount,

if there's N particles in there, squared,

but this is looking like an average.

In fact, if I just divide both sides by N,

the total number of particles,

look at what I'd get.

I get the Force over N

equals m divided by L times,

this whole thing divided by

N is just the average value.
The average value of what?

The average value of V x

squared

and it's the average value of V x squared,

so I'm gonna put a bar

over the top of this.

This is telling you that

it's the average value

of V x squared.

It's not the square of

the average values of V x.

That's different.

If I took the averages of all the Vx's,

V x one plus V x two plus

V x three divided by N

and then square it, I'd

get a different result,

so that's important to note.

First, you square them all,

take the average,

and that's what you're doing here.

You're taking the average of the squares,

not the square of the average.

Okay, so moving on,

we get the F equals N

times

m over L,

the average value of V x squared,

but what do we wanna do with this?

I promised you a relationship

between speeds and pressure,

so let's turn this into pressure.

Let's figure out what's the
pressure on this area here,

so I have to turn this into a pressure.

That's not too hard.

Pressure is just force per area,

so I just divide this by

the area of this wall.

So if I divide the left side by area,

I've gotta divide the right

hand side by area as well.

What does that leave me with?

On the left hand side, I

get pressure, that's good,

a macroscopic variable,

equals

N times m

times V x squared

averaged over all the gas molecules

divided by A times L,

but A, what's A?

A is just L squared.

So I get L squared times L on the bottom.

That's just L cubed

and look at what's gonna happen.

L cubed, that's just volume.

That's the volume of this cube

and so I get N,

the number of molecules times m,

the mass of one of the molecules

times the average value

of the x component squred
over all the gas molecule

divided by V, that's the volume.

We're getting close.

This is looking like the Ideal Gas Law,

so this is really good.

Let me just take this result, actually,

and just put it in a new window

so we can get a clean result.

And look at what I get.

I get that the pressure times the volume,

if I multiply both sides by V,

pressure times volume

equals the number of gas molecules times m

times the average squared x velocity

in the gas.

So this is pretty cool.

If I went out and measured

the pressure of a gas

and the volume of the gas,

I could try to figure out now

what this average squared x components

of velocity are for the gas.

That's a microscopic quantity.

We got a relationship now,

but, I mean, I don't just care,

like I'm not trying to just single out x.

There's y and there's

other directions in here.

Why would we want an

equation with just the x?
Usually, you just want a formula.

It'd be better if this just told us

the total average squared velocity.

Let's do that.

If this is in the x direction,

I had velocity in the x,

but these particles also have

velocity in the y direction,

and so the total,

we know that total V total

would be

V x squared

plus

V y squared, and there's also one more.

We live in three dimensions, there we go,

V in the z direction,

so this is the Pythagorean

theorem in three dimensions.

It works in three, just

as well as it does in two,

but this equation works

also if I average them all.

If I took all the averages

of the x squared components of velocity

and I took the average

of all the V y squared

components of velocity,

so if I take these all and I average 'em,

well this equation's still true,

oops, this should have been

squared, oh my goodness.
This V total here should have
been squared right there.

We take the average.

Now, I'm gonna make a claim.

I'm gonna claim that the particles in here

are flying around randomly.

There's no direction that's singled out.

There's no preferred direction.

They have just as much velocity on average

in every direction as any other direction.

So, really, V in the x direction squared

averaged over all the gas molecules

has to be equal to V in
the y direction squared

'cause why would it be any different?

Why would y be preferred than x?

I mean, on average.

If you had a lot of gas molecules,

these have got to basically

statistically be, even V z,

has got to be equal the

average of those squares.

These have gotta be equal.

So, I may as well write this down here

as three times one of them.

So, three times V x squared average

because I already have that one up here.

And now I can,

this is a way I can get V total in here.

I want V total, not just one direction.

So, I get V x squared

averaged over all the gas molecules

equals, I'm just gonna divide

both sides by three here

and I get V total squared

averaged over all the gas molecules

divided by three.

This is cool.

Now I can substitute this into there

and I'll get a relationship

that says that P times V,

P times V

equals the total number of gas molecules

times the mass one gas molecule

times the average of the

total squared velocities

divided by three

and I'm gonna rearrange

this just a little bit more.

I'm gonna say that let's

multiply both sides by three.

I'll get that three times P V

equals

times

times the average of V total squared

for all the gas molecules

and I'm gonna do one more thing.

I'm gonna multiply both sides by 1/2.

You might think that's random

but I'm doing this for a reason.

Check this out.

Now, look at what we got over here.

This whole term right there,

1/2 m

V squared, this should look familiar.

This is just the average kinetic energy

of one of the gas molecules.

This is awesome.

This says, if I knew the

pressure and the volume,

then I've got a way to figure out

what's the average kinetic energy

of one of these gas molecules.

This give me a direct relationship

between the kinetic

energy of a gas molecule

or the average kinetic energy

and what the macroscopic

pressure and volume are.

It's so important that

I'm gonna write it again.

What we found was that the 3/2

times the pressure times the volume

equals N

times the average kinetic

energy of a gas molecule.

What can we do with this?

We can do a few more things.

P times V, I know what P times V is.

Remember, the Ideal Gas Law,

PV

equals capital N

k T,

so I can substitute in N k T over here

and I'll get that 3/2

times capital N

equals capital N, average kinetic energy.

Well, these Ns cancel

and I get a direct formula

that the average kinetic energy in a gas,

the average kinetic energy

of one single gas molecule

equals 3/2

k B T.

This is nice.

It tells me that directly,

if I know the temperature,

I can directly figure out

the average kinetic energy

of one of these gas molecules

no matter what kind of gas I have

as along as it's an ideal

gas, that's pretty cool.

Something else that's useful

is this is the average kinetic

energy of one gas molecule.

This is N

all of the gas molecules,

the total number of them.

So this whole thing right here

is the total energy, the
total thermal energy,

of that gas if it's monatomic,

if the gas molecule isn't diatomic,

if it's a single, simple monatomic gas,

all it's got is kinetic energy.

That's the only energy you can have,

and so, 3/2 P V

is the total energy of the gas

or you can write it as 3/2

N k T would be the total internal energy

or you wanna do 3/2

little n,

RT

equals the total internal energy.

These are really useful to know

but they're only true for

a monatomic ideal gas,

a monatomic gas where the

molecules that make up the gas

are composed of only a single atom

like helium or neon or

any of the noble gases.

If you have a monatomic ideal gas,

these formulas give you

a direct relationship

between the macroscopic quantities

and the total internal energy of that gas.

These are particularly useful

and it's useful to note that

by total internal energy
for a monatomic ideal gas,

that's just a fancy word for

the total kinetic energy.

See, people used to think

these were different energies.

Remember that people thought

maybe there's thermal energy,

something new, something different.

Nope, Boltzmann told us,

"That's just kinetic energy

in there for the most part,"

and for a monatomic ideal gas,

it's only kinetic energy in there.

So, U total is just another word

for the total kinetic energy,

but when we talk about thermal systems,

you'll often hear it referred to

as the total internal energy of the gas.