Physics 207/201 Honors Lecture HW #2 Due Friday September 18, 2009 1.) Read about Einstein’s work on Brownian motion at: http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/brownian.htm 2.) At this web site you will see the Brownian motion simulation we have been looking at in class. Use the simulator to make a plot like the one that Perrin obtained in 1908 – see fig. 1-3b on the back side of this sheet. Run the simulation for measurement periods ranging from a few seconds to 16 seconds (say, 2, 4, 8, 16 seconds). Run it multiple times (say, 10 times) for each period. For each period compute the average displacement and the standard deviation of the displacement (see P207/201 lab manual intro). Make a plot of average displacement vs measurement period. Use your standard deviation to form a +/- 1 standard deviation “error bar” on each data point. See whether the displacement seems to follow a line that increases as the square root of the period. To make the measurements, I suggest marking on your computer screen the starting point of the blue ball and then measuring the displacement with a ruler. Note that when you stop and reset, the ball doesn’t go back to the
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