Brownian Motion
It’s going on all the time! That would not be a revelation to everyone, certainly, but it was to me. The term “Brownian” is different from other kinds of motion in that it applies to particles, that is, it’s a feature of matter, and that means everything — your hand, your computer, your chair, etc. The most solid thing we’re looking at or touching or walking on is made up of tiny things — “things” — moving around, bumping into one another, changing direction, speed, position. I’m sure I’ve been told that before, but it seems as though there’s something about our current state of affairs, when a minute snippet of life — a virus whose sole goal in life is to reproduce — has changed everyone and everything. It lends a substance, a kind of tangibility to the adventures of subatomic particles.
