Construct · 1 fields · 4 citations

Brownian motion: a standalone construct

One name. One construct. A landmark on the map.

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Brownianmotion1 CONSTRUCTBrownian motionBROWN · PARTICLE JITTER

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Physics (statistical mechanics)

The erratic motion of microscopic particles suspended in a fluid, driven by molecular collisions

The botanist Robert Brown first described the phenomenon in 1828, reporting that pollen grains and other tiny particles suspended in water were in ceaseless, irregular motion that did not come from water currents or from the particles being alive. Albert Einstein gave the quantitative explanation in 1905, showing that the jittering comes from the unequal, random impacts of the fluid's own fast-moving molecules on each particle, and deriving how far a particle drifts over time from the temperature and the fluid's resistance. Jean Perrin's experiments soon confirmed Einstein's predictions and were taken as direct evidence that matter is made of molecules and atoms. In mathematics the same process is formalised as the Wiener process, an idealised model of a continuous path whose successive changes are random and statistically independent, introduced by Norbert Wiener in 1923. As a landmark, Brownian motion links the visible, erratic wandering of a single particle to the invisible motion of molecules, and it supplies the physical picture behind diffusion and behind the random-walk models used across the sciences.[1][2][3][4]

Unit
The random displacement of a suspended particle over time, driven by molecular collisions
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Tracked by recording a particle's successive positions under a microscope and fitting its mean squared displacement against elapsed time

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Nearby constructs

diffusion6 fields · 12 citationsjingle · one name, six constructsGaussian process1 fields · 3 citationsanchor · a standalone constructfluctuation4 fields · 7 citationsjingle · one word, four constructs

References

  1. Brown, R. (1828). A brief account of microscopical observations made in the months of June, July and August 1827, on the particles contained in the pollen of plants; and on the general existence of active molecules in organic and inorganic bodies. The Philosophical Magazine, 4(21), 161–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/14786442808674769
  2. Einstein, A. (1905). Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen. Annalen der Physik, 322(8), 549–560. https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.19053220806
  3. Perrin, J. (1909). Mouvement brownien et réalité moléculaire. Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 18, 5–114.
  4. Wiener, N. (1923). Differential-space. Journal of Mathematics and Physics, 2, 131–174. https://doi.org/10.1002/sapm192321131

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