Abstract
This interdisciplinary work proposes to use astronomical objects as a ludic tool to arouse student's curiosity, provide opportunities and enhance the teaching-learning process in Physics II and Statistical Mechanics classes. Its purpose is to discuss whether the Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution law for ideal gases also describes the behavior of star velocities in star clusters. For this, the student's investigative thoughts it will be triggered by star velocity data, obtained through observations from the Blanco telescope and KPNO (Kitt Peak National Observatory), provided in the literature for the Omega Centauri globular cluster and the Pleiades open star cluster. It can be concluded that in dynamically relaxed globular clusters, although physically very different from ideal gases, stars follow Maxwell-Boltzmann's law of velocity distribution. This is because, in fact, any classical many-body system that satisfies the two assumptions used in the computations of velocity distribution will satisfy the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, regardless of whether the interaction between the bodies is of short or long-range and whether they are microscopic or macroscopic objects. Thus, by demonstrating that star clusters follow ideal gas-like laws, it became possible to use the ludic of astronomy to encourage students in the process of learning the content of the kinetic theory of gases.
Keywords:
Teaching of physics; astronomy; star clusters; interdisciplinarity; kinetic theory of gas; Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution
