Macroscopic Brownian Motion on a Chaotic Fluid Interface

Abstract

Brownian motion is the erratic motion of an object due to collisions with the fluid in which it is immersed. In this work, we detail a tabletop laboratory demonstration of underdamped Brownian motion wherein a macroscopic particle resting on a driven fluid interface exhibits ballistic motion at short times and diffusive motion at long times. We observe the trajectory of a millimetric disk driven by a field of chaotic Faraday waves excited by a shaker. The crossover from ballistic to diffusive motion occurs at time and length scales experimentally accessible through particle tracking of a video recorded with a standard phone camera. Along with representative data, we provide a complete assembly guide, and operating procedure for students so that the experiment can be readily applied in the classroom. The tabletop setup can also be adapted for other student projects and active research topics relating to particle motion on a vibrating fluid interface.