Hello everyone! Welcome to this interesting post on Brownian Motion, Diffusion and the Plasma Ball.

In this lesson, we had the glory of going to the science to see Brownian Motion! Real, right before our eyes under the microscope! Cool? It's a pity I don't have any videos of it here as the photo quality was not very good.

Now this was what we saw.The smoke particles moved in random direction and continous motion and that increasing the temperature will cause the particles to move faster and more vigorously. After the experiment, Mr Tan, our Science Teacher, then explained why the smoke particles were visible to the eye while the air molecules were 'invisible'? Brownian Motion needs air and smoke particles in this case right? Well, the reason this happens is that the size of the smoke particles are larger than the air molecules and can reflect more light into our eyes. Also, interestingly, at 0 Kelvin, the particles will also become stationary!

Next, we worked on diffusion.(*note: no photos again)

Apparatus: Two petri dishes, olive oil, a needle and a supply of cold and hot water.

Steps:1)Place both Petri Dishes on a flat and dull surface. Pour cold water into one and hot water into the other. Illuminate both dishes with strong light from above.
          2)Dip the needle into olive oil and touch the tip of the needle to the cold water surface. Next, use the same needle to apply the same amount of oil into the hot water surface.
          3)Observe how the oil spreads out over the water surface in the two dishes.
          4)Obsercve how the oil film move and the differences in appearance and motion of the two oil films.

Apparently, the experiment failed terribly, with unexpected results. So, what I am going to post next is what ought to happen. The oil will spread out over a larger surface area and moves slowly in the cold water. However, the drop in the hot water will spread faster but over a smaller surface area. This shows us diffusion- the oil spreads out from higher concentration to lower concentration!

Lastly, it is the plasma ball.When a hand is placed near it, it forms filaments of light linking the core to the glass surface. Cool right? When flourescent light is placed near it, the flourescent light tube is ignited due to static electricity.