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Description
The programme looks at (l) the states of matter and the forces which bind atoms together (2) Distribution of molecular velocities in a gas and a method for measuring this.
Subtitle Number Time In Time Out Subtitle Text
100:00:00,00000:00:03,000Gerald Elliott: But first I want you to look at a phenomenon which was…
100:00:00,00000:00:03,000Alan Walton: But what happens if I increase the kinetic energy?
100:00:01,00000:00:04,000(Alan Walton) A much more revealing characteristic for study is…
100:00:01,00000:00:03,000Alan Walton: And you know that if you have a bottle of ammonia say,
200:00:03,00000:00:07,000..first seen by the botanist Robert Brown looking down his microscope…
200:00:04,00000:00:10,000Would the solid array perhaps melt? Now I’m not going to try and do this with my fingers.
200:00:04,00000:00:07,000..the diffusion of one liquid into another.
200:00:04,00000:00:07,000and take the stopper out, it’s not long before you can…
100:00:05,00000:00:09,000Alan Walton: I might use these ball bearings to represent atoms.
300:00:07,00000:00:11,000..at suspensions of pollen grains some hundred years ago.
300:00:07,00000:00:10,000..smell the ammonia in the other corner of the room.
300:00:09,00000:00:13,000Here I’m adding some white painted ball bearings to the tray.
400:00:10,00000:00:13,000Diffusion in gases seems to be a rapid process.
300:00:11,00000:00:14,000We need a lot of balls and I don’t happen to have enough fingers.
200:00:11,00000:00:15,000If I did I would still require a repulsive and an attractive force.
400:00:12,00000:00:16,000He saw that they were constantly in motion, jiggling around in this way, and…
400:00:14,00000:00:16,000Let’s watch them as they diffuse.
500:00:14,00000:00:18,000I have a somewhat more controlled experiment here.
400:00:15,00000:00:21,000So I built myself a sort of tray where I could vibrate a large number of balls at once.
500:00:16,00000:00:19,000..he asked himself whether this was because there was a living system,
600:00:19,00000:00:22,000This tube here we pumped out most of the air out of it.
600:00:20,00000:00:25,000so he did an experiment with suspensions of non-living particles of about the same size,
300:00:23,00000:00:27,000Well there’s the repulsive force all right – they drive each other apart.
700:00:23,00000:00:28,000There’s some bromine up here which we can introduce by opening the tap. I'll do it.
700:00:25,00000:00:29,000gold particles in fact, and convinced himself that it wasn’t a function of…
500:00:26,00000:00:29,000(Alan Walton) Here’s the tray. It’s been shaken randomly by a motor.
500:00:26,00000:00:29,000It’s easier to see what’s happening if we use slow motion.
800:00:29,00000:00:31,000..whether the thing was living or not, he could get…
600:00:30,00000:00:32,000We’ve given the tray irregular edges as…
400:00:30,00000:00:32,000Some motor oil.
900:00:32,00000:00:36,000..just the same molecular motion going on with gold particles.
700:00:32,00000:00:34,000..we’re trying to simulate things on an atomic scale.
800:00:34,00000:00:36,000It was certainly a very rapid process.
600:00:35,00000:00:38,000It’s clearly going to be a lengthy process…
1000:00:37,00000:00:40,000So he said there must be some sorts of forces which were…
800:00:38,00000:00:42,000If I pour ball bearings onto the stationary tray they will eventually…
500:00:38,00000:00:42,000And there’s the attractive force – pull one, and the other follows.
900:00:38,00000:00:41,000It looked as if everything was moving up very rapidly.
700:00:39,00000:00:42,000..so let’s look at the situation after a period of time has elapsed.
1100:00:40,00000:00:44,000..causing these particles in suspension to jiggle around like this.
1000:00:41,00000:00:44,000Mind you we couldn’t tell the difference between something that was moving up like that,
900:00:42,00000:00:46,000..crystallise out into the kind of lattice we’ve seen before.
600:00:43,00000:00:46,000So oily ball bearings represent our atoms.
1200:00:45,00000:00:50,000What then are these forces? To show this I’ve…
800:00:45,00000:00:49,000The white balls have spread out. A look at any one white bearing and…
1100:00:45,00000:00:46,000and something that was moving up like that.
700:00:47,00000:00:50,000Now I’ve only used two ball bearings here and in any real system…
1200:00:47,00000:00:51,000There could well be a spread in the speeds of the gas molecules.
800:00:50,00000:00:52,000..there’s going to be a great many more than two atoms.
900:00:50,00000:00:53,000..you’ll see that it’s imprisoned in a cell whose walls are its nearest neighbours.