Atomic Nature of Matter ("You don’t “own” the atoms that make up your body; you borrow them")

[…] All matter, however solid it may appear, is made up of tiny building blocks, which themselves are mostly empty space. These are atoms – atoms that combine to form molecules that in turn combine to form the compounds and substances of matter. […]

All manner f things – shoes, and ships, and sealing wax; cabbages and kings – anything we can thing of is composed of atoms. One might think that an incredible number of different kinds of atoms exist to account for the rich variety of substances we find around us. But the number is surprisingly small. The great variety of substances results not from any great variety of atoms, but from the many ways a few types of atoms can be combined – just as in color print three colors can be combined to form almost every conceivable color. To date (1989) we know of 109 distinct atoms. These are the chemical elements. Only 90 elements are found naturally; the others are made in the laboratory with high-energy atomic accelerators and nuclear reactors. These heaviest elements are too unstable (radioactive) to occur naturally in appreciable amounts. […]

Atoms are ageless. Atoms in your body have existed since the beginning of time, cycling and recycling among innumerable forms, both non-living and living. When you breathe, for example, only one part of atoms you inhale are exhaled in your next breath. The remaining atoms are taken into your body to become part of you, and they later leave your body by different means. You don’t “own” the atoms that make up your body; you borrow them. We all share from the same atom pool as atoms forever migrate around, within, and throughout us. So some of the atoms in the nose you scratched today could have been part of your neighbor’s ear yesterday! Not only are we all made of the same kinds of atoms, we are also made of the same atoms – atoms that cycle from person to person as we breath, sweat, and vaporize.

Atoms are small, so small that there are about as many atoms of air in your lungs at any moment as there are breaths of air in the atmosphere of the world. Since every breath of air in the atmosphere becomes uniformly mixed in the atmosphere (in about 6 years), every person in the world breaths an average of one of your exhaled atoms in a single breath – for each breath you exhale! Considering the many thousands of breaths people exhale, there are many atoms in your lungs at any moment that were once in the lungs of every person who ever lived. We are literally breathing each other

It is difficult to imagine how small atoms are. Atoms are so small that they have no visible appearance. We could stack microscope on the top of a microscope and never “see: an atom. […]


I remember how fascinated I was to discover by accident this textbook in the library of my school. Rediscovering it today I feel that is the most clear and powerfull humanistic manifesto ( Conceptual Physics , Paul G. Hewitt)