in the Castro, they do. haha
Maybe the honesty’s too much.
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)
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.
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.
Prof. Moriarty, eh?
How about forces “contact” as described by his definition, but masses do not, unless they fuse or some such.
“Parts” of them “touch” in forming bonds. The real problem though is that particles are composed of other particles, so that given various energy levels, how many of them actually touch each other?
“Touching” is a macroscopic notion that has little meaning in the sub-microscopic world. According to QM everything essentially “touches” everything else.
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