Temperature
2 guided lessons · 18 checks · 5. Solids, Liquids and Gases → Ideal Gases
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Temperature and molecular speed
Heat a sealed gas and the molecules do not drift in a preferred direction — they simply move faster in every direction. The speed distribution shifts upward: more molecules at every higher speed, same chaos, hotter gas.
What you know already
A thermometer is a speedometer for molecules. Warm the gas and the average molecular speed rises; cool it and the swarm slows. Better still, the kelvin temperature is exactly proportional to the average kinetic energy — the proportionality that makes every gas law work.
Key points of understanding
- Gas molecules move randomly with a range of speeds at any temperature.
- Increasing the temperature increases the average speed of the molecules.
- Heating transfers energy into the molecules' kinetic store.
- The direction of molecular motion stays random as the speeds rise.
- Cooling the gas lowers the average molecular speed.
Gas molecules move about randomly at high speeds
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1.Temperature and molecular speed
Heat a sealed gas and the molecules do not drift in a preferred direction — they simply move faster in every direction. The speed distribution shifts upward: more molecules at every higher speed, same chaos, hotter gas.
Gas molecules move about randomly at high speeds
Key points
- Gas molecules move randomly with a range of speeds at any temperature.
- Increasing the temperature increases the average speed of the molecules.
- Heating transfers energy into the molecules' kinetic store.
- The direction of molecular motion stays random as the speeds rise.
Guided content from the SME authoring corpus — note rn_tnYrJzct8r6GSYfy, pinned at 8788fc85a2c1 · promoted SyllabAI/syllabai-resources b3caaaa90c5e
