Which of the following statements is true regarding RMS speed?
Practice Questions
Q1
Which of the following statements is true regarding RMS speed?
It is always greater than average speed.
It is always less than average speed.
It is equal to average speed.
It depends on the gas type.
Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions
Which of the following statements is true regarding RMS speed?
Step 1: Understand what RMS speed means. RMS stands for Root Mean Square, which is a way to calculate the average speed of particles in a gas.
Step 2: Know that average speed is calculated by taking the total speed of all particles and dividing by the number of particles.
Step 3: Realize that RMS speed involves squaring the speeds of the particles, averaging those squares, and then taking the square root of that average.
Step 4: Recognize that squaring the speeds gives more weight to higher speeds, which means RMS speed will be influenced more by faster particles.
Step 5: Conclude that because of this squaring effect, RMS speed is always greater than the average speed for a gas.
