Bulletin of Physics Projects, 1, 2016, 33-36 Study of Velocity Distribution of Thermionic electrons with reference to Triode Valve Anupam Bharadwaj, Arunabh Bhattacharyya and Akhil Ch. Das # Department of Physics, B. Borooah College, Ulubari, Guwahati-7, Assam, India # E-mail address:
[email protected] Abstract Velocity distribution of the elements of a thermodynamic system at a given temperature is an important phenomenon. This phenomenon is studied critically by several physicists with reference to different physical systems. Most of these studies are carried on with reference to gaseous thermodynamic systems. Basically velocity distribution of gas molecules follows either Maxwell-Boltzmann or Fermi-Dirac or Bose-Einstein Statistics. At the same time thermionic emission is an important phenomenon especially in electronics. Vacuum devices in electronics are based on this phenomenon. Different devices with different techniques use this phenomenon for their working. Keeping all these in mind we decided to study the velocity distribution of the thermionic electrons emitted by the cathode of a triode valve. From our work we have found the velocity distribution of the thermionic electrons to be Maxwellian. 1. Introduction process of electron emission by the process of increase of Metals especially conductors have large number of temperature of a metal is called thermionic emission. The free electrons which are basically valence electrons. amount of thermal energy given to the free electrons is Though they are called free electrons, at room temperature used up in two ways- (i) to overcome the surface barrier (around 300K) they are free only to move inside the metal and (ii) to give a velocity (kinetic energy) to the emitted with random velocities.