In about 50 BCE, the Roman philosopher Lucretius proposed that apparently static macroscopic bodies were composed on a small scale of rapidly moving atoms all bouncing off each other. This Epicurean atomistic point of … See more

The kinetic theory of gases deals not only with gases in thermodynamic equilibrium, but also very importantly with gases not in thermodynamic equilibrium. This means using Kinetic Theory to consider what are known as "transport properties", such as viscosity See more

1. ^ Maxwell, J. C. (1867). "On the Dynamical Theory of Gases". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 157: 49–88. doi:10.1098/rstl.1867.0004 See more

The application of kinetic theory to ideal gases makes the following assumptions:
• The gas consists of very small particles. This smallness of … See more

Pressure and kinetic energy
In the kinetic theory of gases, the pressure is assumed to be equal to the force (per unit area) exerted by the individual gas atoms or molecules hitting and rebounding from the gas container's surface.
Consider a gas … See more

Fluctuation and dissipation
The kinetic theory of gases entails that due to the microscopic reversibility of the gas particles' detailed dynamics, the system must obey the … See more

• Sydney Chapman and Thomas George Cowling (1939/1970), The Mathematical Theory of Non-uniform Gases: An Account of the Kinetic Theory of Viscosity, Thermal Conduction and … See more