mean free path

American  

noun

Physics, Chemistry.

1. the average distance that a particle travels between successive collisions with other particles.

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mean free path British  

noun

1. the average distance travelled by a particle, atom, etc, between collisions

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mean free path Cultural  

1. The average distance that an object (usually an atom or molecule) can move before colliding with something.

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Example Sentences

In “Mean Free Path,” a collection of poetry published in 2010, Ben Lerner kicked off a stanza like this: “There must be an easier way to do this/I mean without writing.”

From New York Times

It is capable of exciting phosphorescence at comparatively low degrees of exhaustion, and also projects shadows at pressures far greater than those at which the mean free path is comparable to the dimensions of the vessel.

From Project Gutenberg

In a lightning discharge, matter moves in straight lines at ordinary pressure when the mean free path is exceedingly small, and frequently images of wires or other metallic objects have been produced by the particles thrown off in straight lines.

From Project Gutenberg

One example is the very long mean free path of charge carriers in graphene.

From Nature

This energy is proportional to Xeλ when X is the electric force, e the charge on the corpuscle, and λ the mean free path.

From Project Gutenberg