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Re:Brownian Motion by edbaskerville on Thursday October 08, 2026 @02:06AM (#50002287)
> Then starting in 1905, Albert Einstein published a series of papers in which he hythesized that the pollen particles were moving because they were being bombarded by invisible molecules in the liquid...At the time, this theory was controversial, because the idea of molecules was not yet widely accepted.

What? The idea of molecules was not widely accepted in 1905?

Re:Brownian Motion by belviewreview on Friday October 09, 2026 @06:38PM (#50027469)
Correct. Books talk as if atomic theory was accepted from early on in the modern era, but actually through the 19th century many prominent physicists and chemists considered it to be unproven speculation, and one reason is the theory lacked specific sizes and masses for atoms. Einstein's analysis persuaded people because it provided these and furthermore numerical predictions that fit the observed data.