What Brown saw and you can too
Abstract
A discussion of Robert Brown's original observations of particles ejected by pollen of the plant Clarkia pulchella undergoing what is now called Brownian motion is given. We consider the nature of those particles and how he misinterpreted the Airy disk of the smallest particles to be universal organic building blocks. Relevant qualitative and quantitative investigations with a modern microscope and with a "homemade" single lens microscope similar to Brown's are presented.
- Publication:
-
American Journal of Physics
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- DOI:
- 10.1119/1.3475685
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1008.0039
- Bibcode:
- 2010AmJPh..78.1278P
- Keywords:
-
- botany;
- Brownian motion;
- history;
- optical microscopy;
- 01.50.Pa;
- 05.00.00;
- 87.00.00;
- Laboratory experiments and apparatus;
- Statistical physics thermodynamics and nonlinear dynamical systems;
- Biological and medical physics;
- Physics - Popular Physics;
- Condensed Matter - Statistical Mechanics;
- Physics - Classical Physics;
- Physics - History and Philosophy of Physics
- E-Print:
- 14.1 pages, 11 figures, to be published in the American Journal of Physics. This differs from the previous version only in the web site referred to in reference 3. Today, this Brownian motion web site was launched, and http://physerver.hamilton.edu/Research/Brownian/index.html, is now correct