You are performing work as an assistant to a cosmology professor. She asks you to estimate the temperature of the Universe at a time after the Big Bang when neutral atoms could form from the plasma and the Universe became transparent. She tells you that the energy required to excite an atom is on the order of 1 eV. She suggests you use the Boltzmann distribution function e-E/k BT to find the order of magnitude of the threshold temperature at which 1.00% of a population of photons has energy greater than 1.00 eV.

You are performing work as an assistant to a cosmology professor. She asks you to estimate the temperature of the Universe at a time after the Big Bang when neutral atoms could form from the plasma and the Universe became transparent. She tells you that the energy required to excite an atom is on the order of 1 eV. She suggests you use the Boltzmann distribution function e-E/k BT to find the order of magnitude of the threshold temperature at which 1.00% of a population of photons has energy greater than 1.00 eV.