Equipartition theorem
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In classical statistical mechanics, the equipartition theorem relates the temperature of a system to its average energies. The equipartition theorem is also known as the law of equipartition, equipart
Figure 6. A combined X-ray and optical image of the Crab Nebula. At the heart of this nebula there is a rapidly rotating neutron star which has about one and a half times the mass of the Sun but is only 25 km across. The equipartition theorem is useful in predicting the properties of such neutron stars.
Boltzmann constant
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The Boltzmann constant is the proportionality factor that relates the average relative thermal energy of particles in a gas with the thermodynamic temperature of the gas. It occurs in the definitions
Equipartition theorem
…spring. For example, it predicts that every atom in a monatomic ideal gas has an average kinetic energy of 3/2kBT in thermal equilibrium, where kB is the Boltzmann constant and T is the (thermodynamic) temperature. More generally, equipartition can be applied to any classical system in thermal equilibrium, no matter how…
Ludwig Boltzmann, the constant's namesake
Max Planck, who discovered and named the constant
Boltzmann's grave in the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna, with bust and entropy formula.