Albert Einstein: The Size and Existence of Atoms
How do we know atoms exist? And just how big are they? Pi day (3.14) is Albert Einstein's Birthday! To celebrate, we'll explain 4 of his most groundbreaking ...
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One thing that's astounding about Einstein's publications in 1905 is that they spanned such a large breadth of physics: after illuminating the quantum nature of light by explaining the photoelectric effect in March, in April he turned to something apparently more mundane: particles suspended in fluids. In particular, if you look at tiny particles in water, or dust motes in the air, you'll see that they jitter about in a very odd and random way. That is, it appears odd and random unless you believe that the air or water itself is made up of even smaller particles called atoms or molecules, which just bounce off of each other according to very simple rules. This is called Brownian motion, despite the fact that botanist Brown wasn't the first to discover it, and similarly Eins...
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One thing that's astounding about Einstein's publications in 1905 is that they spanned such a large breadth of physics: after illuminating the quantum nature of light by explaining the photoelectric effect in March, in April he turned to something apparently more mundane: particles suspended in fluids. In particular, if you look at tiny particles in water, or dust motes in the air, you'll see that they jitter about in a very odd and random way. That is, it appears odd and random unless you believe that the air or water itself is made up of even smaller particles called atoms or molecules, which just bounce off of each other according to very simple rules. This is called Brownian motion, despite the fact that botanist Brown wasn't the first to discover it, and similarly Eins...
