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9. Solo atoms: electrons, nuclei and quanta.

Author

Cotterill, Rodney

Abstract

I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. Our world is a material world. Everything we see, touch, taste or smell is composed of one or more materials. Even our hearing depends on the interaction of the eardrums with the gaseous form of that familiar, though invisible, material known as air. Interest in the matter that makes up our environment has grown with the realization that it can be brought under control. At the dawn of civilization this control was of a rather rudimentary type. The earliest use of such materials as stone, wood, and the bones and skin of animals involved relatively minor alterations to these substances, and they were naturally taken for granted. Just which physical phenomena led to speculation about the nature of materials remains a matter of conjecture. The stimulation probably came from observations of simple modifications of state, such as the irreversible change caused by the burning of wood and the reversible changes between the solid, liquid, and gaseous forms of substances like water. The great diversity of form and behaviour seen in the material world stems from the wide range of chemical composition. Although chalk and cheese, for example, are both composed of atoms, the atoms are of different kinds and are combined in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2008
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