Thermal velocity
Typical velocity of the thermal motion of particles / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Thermal velocity or thermal speed is a typical velocity of the thermal motion of particles that make up a gas, liquid, etc. Thus, indirectly, thermal velocity is a measure of temperature. Technically speaking, it is a measure of the width of the peak in the Maxwell–Boltzmann particle velocity distribution. Note that in the strictest sense thermal velocity is not a velocity, since velocity usually describes a vector rather than simply a scalar speed.
Since the thermal velocity is only a "typical" velocity, a number of different definitions can be and are used.
Taking to be the Boltzmann constant,
the absolute temperature, and
the mass of a particle, we can write the different thermal velocities: