Do Atoms Ever Touch? (video)

YouTube.com ^ | 8-5-2014 | Sixty Symbols

[servo1969]

Professor Philip Moriarty expresses his displeasure with oft-repeated belief that atoms do no physically touch each other.

[sappy]

in the Castro, they do. haha

[rightwingintelligentsia]

Maybe the honesty’s too much.

[IronJack]

In the Castro, the Adams touch ...

[Resettozero]

Maybe the honesty’s too much.

Billy, in my neck of the woods, in these here parts, atoms all go into the mash whether they're touchin' or not. We just don't care.

[Celtic Conservative]

Then they have to close their eyes and hide?

CC

[cripplecreek]

What I take away from the video is that they don’t make actual contact. He’s defining a contact point as the point where they get close enough to repel each other.

It might be different if an atom were a simple solid piece of matter but it isn’t. If a hydrogen atom had a nucleus the size of a basketball, it would have an electron orbiting nearly a half mile away. If you have a neighboring atom, it doesn’t seem possible that their electron orbits can cross or there would be chaos and the atoms would destroy each other. (Electrons smashing into each other or into the nuclei of the neighboring atom)

[Boogieman]

Well, according to wave-particle duality, they must touch. In fact, since waves propagate to infinity, if particles behave as waves, then every elementary particle in the universe is touching every other elementary particle.

[Boogieman]

“It might be different if an atom were a simple solid piece of matter but it isn’t.”

We have known the Rutherford model of the atom is not accurate for some time, so why bother talking about atoms as if it were? It seems more accurate to say that “solid matter” is an effect produced by atoms, like an emergent phenomenon, and not an attribute of the atoms themselves.

[Migraine]

Honesty’s too much — LOL to that mushy song.

[Migraine]

Besides — I’ve learned not to trust atoms. They make up everything.

[rightwingintelligentsia]

;-)

[dfwgator]

[Migraine]

If atoms are a quasi microcosm of the universe, maybe there’s some ‘dark matter’ in there?

[Vermont Lt]

Do we want them to touch?

I thought we never wanted to cross the beams.

Anyway, this week is about virology. I don’t have time for nuclear physics.

[expat2]

The H atom is both the nucleus and the electron, not just the nucleus. When two H atoms approach each other the electrons do 'cross' each other. In fact, the two electrons both go around each of the nuclei (exchange) and produce a molecule consisting of two nuclei with 2 electrons 'buzzing around' them both. This forms the H2 molecular bond.

So, do the atoms touch? They not only touch but they merge. Do the nuclei touch? No, except under very unusual circumstances, but that is a very different quetion.

[bigbob]

Prof. Moriarty, eh?

[Boogieman]

Hold your horses, we don’t even know if there is “dark matter” in the macrocosm universe yet.

[dfwgator]

[ecomcon]

How about forces “contact” as described by his definition, but masses do not, unless they fuse or some such.