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Old 4th July 2012, 03:34 PM   #144
ben m
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Join Date: Jul 2006
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Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger View Post
We tend to view solid things as taking up the amount of space that their visible mass occupies. But there's a lot space between the molecules, and a lot of space between the protons and electrons within the molecules and a lot of space between the particles that make up the protons and neutrons and so on. I was just wondering what you'd have left if you squeezed all the proverbial air out of the molecule balloons.
It's simply not a good way of dealing with it. I know it's common to say that "an atom is mostly empty space" but it isn't, really. The electrons in the atom are, in some sense, "filling" all the space in it already.

Why do people say electrons are tiny and/or pointlike? Well, if you hit them with a really short-wavelength probe, you can sort of force them to behave as tiny and pointlike. But an atom isn't doing that, an atom is letting them hang around with long wavelengths.

How about all the stuff whereby an alpha particle can "go right through" an atom "without hitting anything"? That has nothing to do with spatial gaps between things, or emptiness, or hollowness---it's just a statement about how strong the alpha/electron interaction is.
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