Explanation

The degrees of freedom refer to the number of independent ways a gas molecule can store energy.

For a monoatomic gas (e.g., noble gases like helium, neon, argon):

• It has only translational motion along the x, y, and z axes.
• There are no rotational or vibrational degrees of freedom.

Thus, the total degrees of freedom for a monoatomic gas is 3 (one for each spatial direction: x, y, and z).