Hover over the menu bar to pick a physics animation.
This animation shows that, regardless of initial disc energy and mass,
all of the discs' energy distribution for the two dimensions animated here form an exponential curve.
This is true even if the mass and initial energy of the discs is different.
The initial energies of the red discs are different from the initial energies
of the blue discs. When the Start button is pushed both red and blue discs, due to disc-disc collisions take
on their normal thermal velocities which means that the energy distribution of each type is the same exponential.
The exponential has the form `exp(-E/(E_"avg"))` where `E_"avg"` is the average energy of all the discs, red and blue.
The rate of conversion to the exponential is influenced by the average density of discs and
the sum of the radii of the discs as well as the average speed of the discs.
The green curve shows what will be the final energy distribution.
Also shown are histograms of the energies of the red and blue discs.
For detailed information on the math used here see Energy Equipartition 2D Details
After a long time the histogram curves are expected to match the green theoretical curve.
The learner may (within limits) use the Sliders to change the following variables:
1. Mass of red discs
2. Mass of blue discs
3. Total number of discs
4. Initial average energy of red discs
5. Initial average energy of blue discs