https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUfYbZkkFJ0
This is pretty neat. It's Diatomaceous Earth under a microscope.
Now you might be asking, "What's so interesting about that?", well, it's made up of the remains of microorganisms called diatoms that died perhaps millions of years ago. And yet, at 1000x magnification, an interesting thing is happening -- They're moving as if they're alive.
This movement is caused by the molecules of water bumping up against the larger particles, it's called "Brownian motion". It was discovered by a botanist named Brown who was investigating pollen, and noticed similar movement. Throughout his testing, he was able to see that the same movement happened with living plants, with dead plants, and with stuff that definitely wasn't alive, like little bits of rock.
In 1905 it wasn't actually confirmed that atoms were something that existed (giving you an idea of just how quickly the science moved), but Albert Einstein came up with a hypothesis that Brownian motion was caused by molecules made up of atoms bumping up against larger particles, and in a paper came up with an equation that could be used to find the amount of particles at a certain temperature at a certain pressure, something incredibly important and useful if it could be found.
A few years later, someone ran the experiment, and was able to find that number.
This is pretty neat. It's Diatomaceous Earth under a microscope.
Now you might be asking, "What's so interesting about that?", well, it's made up of the remains of microorganisms called diatoms that died perhaps millions of years ago. And yet, at 1000x magnification, an interesting thing is happening -- They're moving as if they're alive.
This movement is caused by the molecules of water bumping up against the larger particles, it's called "Brownian motion". It was discovered by a botanist named Brown who was investigating pollen, and noticed similar movement. Throughout his testing, he was able to see that the same movement happened with living plants, with dead plants, and with stuff that definitely wasn't alive, like little bits of rock.
In 1905 it wasn't actually confirmed that atoms were something that existed (giving you an idea of just how quickly the science moved), but Albert Einstein came up with a hypothesis that Brownian motion was caused by molecules made up of atoms bumping up against larger particles, and in a paper came up with an equation that could be used to find the amount of particles at a certain temperature at a certain pressure, something incredibly important and useful if it could be found.
A few years later, someone ran the experiment, and was able to find that number.
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