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Re: energy distribution

At 08:05 AM 5/12/99 -0600, Jim Green wrote:
John, if I know the E of the system, how can the p of any particle be >
sqrt (2mE)? If it were, then E would be = p^2/2m

There's a difference between "any" and "all".

If *all* of them had p > sqrt 2mE, then sure, that would be inconsistent
with the given total E.

But a real thermal distribution is, well, a distribution. Some of them
will have less than the average energy, and some will have more. An
exponentially-small fraction of them will have a *lot* more than the average.