Brownian motion was discovered by Robert Brown when he showed the jostling of atoms within a glass of water by watching a pollen grain be bumped around the glass by the moving particles. Studies who do this experiment make these very pretty charts of the movement of the particles that look like sporadic lines drawn by an eight year old.I wanted to mention Brownian motion so that I could mention this amazing fact that I recently read about. Apparently we have the ability to hear the jostling of atoms, according to this excerpt from Jonah Lehrer's book, Proust was a Neuroscientist.
" The cochlea is quilted with 16,000 of the neurons. In a noisy world, they are ceaselessly being bent. The air is filled with vibrations, and every vibration reverberates inside the echo chamber of the ear. Hair cells [in the cochlea] are sensitive to sounds of atomic dimensions, we can literally hear Brownian motion, the random jostle of atoms."
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