What Brown saw and you can too

Philip Pearle; Brian Collett; Kenneth Bart; David Bilderback; Dara Newman; Scott Samuels

doi:10.1119/1.3475685

What Brown saw and you can too

Philip Pearle
, Brian Collett
, Kenneth Bart
, David Bilderback
, Dara Newman
, Scott Samuels

Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences

Hamilton College
University of Montana

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

33 Scopus citations

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.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1278-1289
Number of pages	12
Journal	American Journal of Physics
Volume	78
Issue number	12
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1119/1.3475685
State	Published - 2010

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10.1119/1.3475685

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AB - 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.

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What Brown saw and you can too

Abstract

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