Brownian motion on the discontinuous structure of matter". The direction of the force of atomic bombardment is constantly changing, and at different times the particle is hit more on one side than another, leading to the seemingly random nature of the motion. The many-body interactions that yield the Brownian pattern cannot be solved by a model accounting for every involved molecule. In consequence only probabilistic models applied to molecular populations can be employed to describe it. Two such models of the statistical mechanics, due to Einstein and Smoluchowski are presented below. Another, pure probabilistic class of models is the class of the
Brownian ratchet for example lifting a weight ("m") against gravity. The energy necessary to do this work apparently would come from the heat bath, without any heat gradient. Were such a machine to work successfully, its operation would violate the second law of thermodynamics, one form of which states: "It is impossible for any device that operates on a cycle to receive heat from a single reservoir and produce a net amount of work." Although at first sight the Brownian ratchet seems to extract useful work from Brownian motion, Feynman demonstrated that if the entire device is at the same temperature, the