  Calculations are carried out for the energy accommodation coefficient at a
gas-surface interface using a recently developed classical mechanical theory of
atom-surface collisions that includes both direct scattering and
trapping-desorption processes in the physisorption well of the interaction
potential. Full three-dimensional calculations are compared with the available
data for the accommodation of rare gases at a tungsten surface and good
agreement is found for the heavier gases for which classical physics is
expected to be valid at all measured temperatures.
