This applet will simulate the motion of a 2D swarm of electrons confined within a bounding box. Between 1 and 10000 electrons may be simulated (some machines may slow down noticably at the higher end of this scale), and the temperature may be varied between 0K and 600K.
Shown to the right of the display are two histograms, one for each momentum component. With too few electrons there may be no discernable pattern, but with sufficiently many the histograms should become (approximate) gaussians after a short while.
Note that although the electrons are all initially given random gaussian momentum components, the swarm of electrons starts in the corner of the box. The effects of this placement disappear with time, but for a short while it is possible (with sufficiently many electrons) to pick out "bumps" in the histograms corresponding to sets of reflected electrons.