#atoms

In the world of the very small, where particle and wave aspects of reality are equally significant, things do not behave in any way that we can understand from our experience of the everyday world...all pictures are false, and there is no physical analogy we can make to understand what goes on inside atoms. Atoms behave like atoms, nothing else. ↗

— John Gribbin

#discovery #life #particles #quantum-mechanics #quantum-physics

If instead of arranging the atoms in some definite pattern, again and again repeated, on and on, or even forming little lumps of complexity like the odor of violets, we make an arrangement which is always different from place to place, with different kinds of atoms arranged in many ways, continually changing, not repeating, how much more marvelously is it possible that this thing might behave? Is it possible that that "thing" walking back and forth in front of you, talking to you, is a great glob of these atoms in a very complex arrangement, such that the sheer complexity of it staggers the imagination as to what it can do? When we say we are a pile of atoms, we do not mean we are merely a pile of atoms, because a pile of atoms which is not repeated from one to the other might well have the possibilities which you see before you in the mirror. ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#physics #richard-feynman #six-easy-pieces #change

The void is 'not-being,' and no part of 'what is' is a 'not-being,'; for what 'is' in the strict sense of the term is an absolute plenum. This plenum, however, is not 'one': on the contrary, it is a 'many' infinite in number and invisible owing to the minuteness of their bulk. ↗

— Aristotle

#atom #atomic #atomic-science #atoms #democritus

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart. ↗

— Richard Adams

#belief #contingent #forces #heart #human

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#away #beauty #desert #feel #gas

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms. ↗

— George Wald

#atom #atoms #knowing #physicist #way

When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images. ↗

— Niels Bohr

#comes #concerned #creating #describing #facts

We're not splitting atoms here; we're trying to entertain people. ↗

— Boomer Esiason

#entertain #entertain people #here #people #splitting

In Italy, on the breaking up of the Roman Empire, society might be said to be resolved into its original elements, - into hostile atoms, whose only movement was that of mutual repulsion. ↗

— Edward Everett

#breaking #breaking up #elements #empire #hostile

We thought it would be nice to have atoms interact in such a gentle way with the photons that they would just take an imprint of the photons, so that many atoms could 'see' the same photon and it would give rise to a lot of interesting effects. Myself and my colleagues had this project for a very long time and we were finally able to observe it. ↗

— Serge Haroche

#atoms #be nice #colleagues #could #effects