A novel pedagogical technique is presented that can be used in the
undergraduate (UG) class to formulate a relativistically extended Kinetic
Theory of Gases and thermal speed distribution, while assuming the basic
thermal symmetry arguments of the famous Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution as
presented at the UG level. The adopted framework can be used by students to
understand the physics in a thermally governed system at high temperature and
speeds, without having to indulge in high level tensor based mathematics, as
has been done by the previous works in the subject. Our approach, a logical
extension of that proposed by Maxwell, will first recapitulate what is taught
and known in the UG class and then present a methodology inspired from the
Maxwell-Boltzmann framework that will help students to understand and derive
the physics of relativistic thermal systems. The methodology uses simple tools
well known to undergraduates and involves a component of computational
techniques that can be used to involve students in this exercise. We have tried
to place the current work in a larger perspective in regard to the earlier
works done and emphasize on it's simplicity and accessibility to students.
Towards the end, interesting implications of the relativistically extended
distribution are presented and compared with the Maxwell-Boltzmann results at
various temperatures.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, Publication accepted in Pramana - Journal of
Physics (Indian Academy of Sciences). Revised version has an additional
section, discussing previous work on relativistic Kinetic Theory in section
2.1 and comparison with these in section 6. Arguments for formulating a
relativistic thermal speed distributions have been enriched and made more
clear and categorical in section