That may sound kinda harsh, but hear me out.
You're made of atoms, right? Well did you know that atoms are actually 99.999999999999% "empty" space? It's a crazy concept, but that's what I shoot for with this series. So grab a snack, relax, and let's learn about how everything is pretty much nothing.
In the lab
All the way back in 1909, English physicist Ernest Rutherford, through a series of experiments, showed this to be true. He fired a beam of alpha particles at a sheet of gold foil. To their surprise, some of those particles bounced back, most passing straight through the sheet. This discovery led him to propose that atoms were mostly empty where the negatively charged electrons orbit the nucleus, and the only solid part is the tiny nucleus itself. The alpha particles that had ricocheted off the foil had hit the dead center of a gold atom, and the rest passed through the space where electrons take home.
The nucleus of an atom is incredibly small compared to its outer "shell". For reference, if the nucleus of a hydrogen atom were scaled up to the size of a speck of dust so we were able to see it, the entire atom would encompass hundreds of square miles... Need a little more reference? Here's a super cool video from the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell about the size of atoms:
New look, same great taste!
Since atoms are smaller than light waves, we can't actually see them by conventional means.
Scientists have known for centuries that atoms are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. They always knew that protons and neutrons are found bound together inside the nucleus, and that electrons orbit around the center. How those electrons orbit the nucleus is has changed. See, scientists used to believe that electrons orbited along defined paths, sort of like a solar system orbits the sun at its center, even naming each of the electrons in an atom depending on "how close" they orbited the center. This theory has been turned on it's head, and scientists now understand the "fuzzy" nature of particles, and matter in general. Atoms actually "look" a little more like the image below, even though this too is a bit of a stretch of the imagination. Electrons are tricky little buggers, and they don't follow a defined path. In a way, an electron can be in any place in the "electron cloud" at any time.
Solid is a lie, nothing is real!
Why do things feel solid if everything is mostly empty? Most believe it's because of repulsion. The same way two magnets of the same charge don't want touch.
When the atoms in your body, which are mostly bonded together, come into contact with the atoms of the wall, again, mostly bonded together, the electron clouds in the atoms of your body push against the clouds of the atoms of a solid obect. This is thought to have a lot to do with the way the electrons behave, and the amount of energy it would require to "line up" all the electrons in each of the clouds to allow them to pass through each other without interacting.
So yeah, you're mostly nothing...
But the tiny bit of you that's actually there makes you awesome. You have the ability to fathom incredible things like this, even if you don't have the ability to pass through solid objects...
If you enjoyed this post, consider upvoting and/or resteeming it. I try very hard to deliver quality, original content, and often my posts fly under the radar. I'm still a growing minnow (actually just a redfish), and I could use all the help I can get! Now that I've gotten that out of the way, you have yourself a wonderful day!
Sources:
- https://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/Petrology/WhatAtomsLookLike.HTM
- https://phys.org/news/2017-02-atoms-space-solid.html
- https://theconversation.com/if-atoms-are-mostly-empty-space-why-do-objects-look-and-feel-solid-71742
Ready to learn more? Checkout my recent post about
The Science and Psychology of ADHD!
