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Homework Statement
Beam of silver atoms are passing through air at a temp 273K and a pressure of 1 Pa. The beam is attenuated by a factor of 2.72 in a distance of 10^-2 m. Find the mean free path of the silver atoms and estimate the effective collision radius..
Homework Equations
The Attempt at a Solution
Ok so taking the probability of the collision between x and x+dx to be 1/a e ^-1/a x where 1/a is the mean free path, i worked it out to be 0.01m...but this seems huge? Why should it be about 1 cm?
Also, to work out the effective collision radius, do i just use pi r^2 = collision cross section (usually denoted by sigma), where r is the effective collision radius?... I get this to be about 2.91 x 10^-10 m...but is this right?