Trivia Junction

A Compendium of trivia I find interesting
...for the curious

Mostly Nothing Is Solid

In 1911, Ernest Rutherford fired positively charged particles at a thin gold foil. Most of the particles passed through the foil, but some were bounced back. Rutherford concluded that atoms consist of mostly empty space, surrounding a dense, compact region with a positive charge (the nucleus).

Despite the space that exists within atoms, the forces between the particles give substances their strength. A table supports a book because of the bonds (shared electrons) between atoms in the table's molecules.

Attractive forces hold the atoms together, but repulsive forces between the atoms' outer electrons prevent the atoms from being pushed into one another.

Things get kind of weird when it comes to explaining the forces between subatomic particles. According to the Standard Model, these forces are also carried by particles, which are tossed back and forth like a basketball between players. The strong nuclear force that binds together the quarks in the nucleus is carried by particles known as gluons. Photons are the particles that carry the electromagnetic force that binds electrons to the nucleus.

One way to think about it is to imagine a fish net or chain-link fence, which can be very strong because of the way it is constructed. Yet it is full of empty space.

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