Engineering: The challenge of temperature

# 4.4 Summary of Section 4

- Thermal energy is a random thing, so any group of particles possessing it will have a distribution of kinetic energies.

- The fraction of particles with energy greater than an amount E﻿1 is proportional to exp(−E﻿1/kT).

- Thermally activated rates follow Arrhenius's law and are characterised by an activation energy.

- Diffusion in solids and electrical conduction in ceramics are thermally activated processes.

OpenLearn - Engineering: The challenge of temperature
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