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THE TOTALLY FREAKY TRUTH ABOUT MATTER
Read this. You not be sorry. Freaked out maybe...
* All matter is composed of atoms
* Atoms consist of three parts: proton, neutron, electron
* The "nucleus" consists of protons and neutrons.
* Electrons form the "shell" and orbit the nucleus.
* The nucleus is incredibly, incredibly small compared to the size of the atom overall. How small?
Place a marble inside a large spherical room 200 miles across. That's how small.
* But despite its small size, the nucleus by far contains the vast majority of weight of the atom.
* Over 99.9% of an atom's mass is concentrated in the nucleus. The electrons are relatively very, very tiny. Compared to a proton or neutron, an electron is nothing more than the head of a pin orbiting a marble... some 100 miles away.
That said...
* The only parts of actual "matter" in an atom, are the proton, neutron, and to a much lesser extent, the electron.
* The most common atom in the universe is hydrogen, which consists of one single electron and single proton.
* Relative in size to the atom... within the electron orbit... there are thousands of cubic "miles" of empty space.
* How much empty space? If you were to compress all the atoms on Earth so that there was zero-space between protons neutrons and electrons-- the result would only be the size of a baseball-- and amazingly that baseball would still weigh as much as the Earth does now. The original size of the Earth, some 3,000 miles in any direction... would be empty space. That's how much empty space was inolved in the atoms of the Earth in the first place... and no matter how solid the ground seems... is how much "empty space" is beneath your feet at this very moment.
Realistically speaking...
* An atom is almost entirely empty space.
* The actual matter involved is akin to one speck of dust in an entire city block.
* What's even scarier, is that empty space doesn't actually contain "air"... because air itself is made up of atoms (rather large ones, in fact). There isn't room inside the atom for air to exist. The space inside an atom-- is quite literally "nothing".
So the totally freaky truth about matter...
... is that all matter, no matter how "dense".... is for the most part... empty nothingness.
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