• intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    The term “mean free path” sounds a lot like an average to me, implying an distribution which extends beyond that number.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      One cubic centimeter of air contains 90,000,000,000,000 atoms. In that context, mean free path is 68nm up to the limits of your ability to measure. That is flip a coin 90 million million times and average the heads and tails. It’s going to be extremely close to 50%.

      Not to mention that at 5ghz, the sound can only propagate 68 nm.