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Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution. The air around you is full of tiny molecules, and at room temperature most of them move faster than the speed of sound. They do not all move at the same speed. A few are slow, most cluster around a typical speed, and a rare few are extremely fast. In 1860, James Clerk Maxwell worked out how these speeds are distributed. Ludwig Boltzmann later extended the idea. Here 1,200 beads play the molecules. The faster a bead flies out, the farther it lands, so each slot collects beads of similar speed. Together, the piles trace the Maxwell–Boltzmann curve.