In 1828, the botanist Robert Brown observed that when grains of pollen were immersed in water and observed under a microscope, the grains moved randomly. Though at first he hoped that this was a manifestation of the pollen's "life force", he discovered that any fine dust or powder produced the same effect. The "Brownian motion" of the pollen was due to the random impacts of water molecules, which themselves are too small to see with the human eye. This was one of the first experiments to establish conclusively the existence of atoms.
This piece was produced in a fashion similar to Sunday Afternoon except for the inclusion of the large yellow circle. The small circles represent the water molecules and quantum mechanics tells us that they are perfectly indistinguishable so they should all be the exact same color. However this is art so their colors are chosen at random from a pallete with a bluish hue.
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