Talk:Maxwell speed distribution

Don't you think that it would be good to show how the derivation of the speeds is made? Or maybe, to leave it like this at hte beginning and to have a chapter called Derivation. What do you think? Cheers, Hristo

I don't understand how the number of velocity vectors that have a certain speed depends on that speed. In any case (except when the speed is zero) there are an infinite number of vectors that lie on a certain sphere (and thus have a speed equal to the radius of that sphere) and a bigger sphere does not have "more" vectors (in rigorous terms the cardinality is the same). That whole section should be explained more clearly and thoroughly I think. -Dan

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ To Dan - Consider the surface area of a sphere is equal to 4(pi)r2, considering speed as the modulus of a 3D vector gives speed = dist from origin. An equidistant surface from the origin is a sphere. Rigourous this is not but it gets the point across.

And at the end of the article the definition of Vmax is very misleading. It is NOT Vmax as it isn't the maximum velocity. It is the MODAL SPEED corresponding to MAXIMUM PROBABILITY ~Atrebates —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.8.99 (talk) 17:10, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Merger proposal
The page Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution discusses the same distribution as this page, but from a less physical viewpoint. There is a proposal on its talk page to merge this page into a section of that page, which I support, if anyone is willing to put in the effort. DutchCanadian (talk) 20:44, 5 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I strongly support this. I am going to add the relevant tags. Jess (talk) 20:14, 22 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I super duper support this! If nobody objects or does it first, I'll probably do this soon. --Nanite (talk) 12:24, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I know that this was devised for gases, but hasn't it been applied to other phenomena?
It seems odd to say it can only be used for ideal gases. Other phenomena may show similar distributions, right? 173.66.211.53 (talk) 21:28, 21 March 2013 (UTC)