► |
Some people are just as empty-headed as you think
Atoms, the fundamental building blocks of matter, are over 99.9% empty space, and what’s left isn’t as solid as we think. Picture an atom—tiny electrons orbiting around a larger core of protons and neutrons—and get ready to adjust your stereotype. Both electrons and protons have a dual wave-particle nature, meaning that they’re not solid spheres like we imagine. It would be more accurate to imagine an atom as a dense, fuzzy cloud surrounded by a thinner, even fuzzier cloud. Solidity is only an illusion created by the negative forces of electrons repelling—as I’m typing now, I’m not actually touching the keyboard: the electrons of my fingers are just repelling the electrons of the keys with sufficient enough force to press them down. If the atom is mostly filled with empty space, then so are our heads—but it’s amazing how much they can still do.
(via sunhits)
