Collision Parameters

Collisions among the constituents of the gas are the essential process that drives the gas into thermal equilibrium with particle velocities according the before introduced Maxwell Boltzmann distribution. Many different phenomena are observed when two particle collide. Energy, momentum or charge maybe exchanged between the particles involved, but their sums are conserved. This variety of processes will be covered in more detail in the following section , within this section we will have a closer look onto the typical distance traveled between collisions and their occurrence frequency .