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 2008-08-28, 21:14 #1 ShiningArcanine     Dec 2005 22×23 Posts Inconsistencies on Wikipedia? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell...tion_of_speeds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_constant Wikipedia says that the Boltzman constant k, is k = R/N(a), where R is the ideal gas constant and N(a) is Avogadro's number, yet whenever this is substituted into equations on wikipedia, terms seem to vanish. For example, in the following, m, the molar mass, seems to disappear from the equation: http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/c/b...84248a223c.png In the case of the ideal gas law, n, the number of moles, also seems to disappear from the equation: http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/3/c...db3107f630.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/2/3...172d2a6331.png Is this some error or is there some implicit thing that I fail to see? I apologize if asking here is inappropriate, but this is the only place that I know where I can ask math/math-related questions and expect to receive some sort of answer, so I thought I would ask here. By the way, I had not seen that the equation for the mean speed of molecules in a gas had already been derived for me on Wikipedia, so I took it upon myself to derive it. While working on that problem, I found a problem in my old Calculus textbook that asked for a derivation of the very same thing, wondered why there was a discrepancy between the usage of R and k in the equation the textbook had (it used R) and the equation Wikipedia had (it used k) and solved the textbook problem anyway. I would not have noticed this if it had not been for that. I am very curious as to what the reason is for the discrepancies I have found. Last fiddled with by ShiningArcanine on 2008-08-28 at 21:15