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If Anti-atoms exhibit anti-gravity effects, does that mean that mean we finally get hover boards?
Scientist also want to find out if the anti-atoms exhibit anti-gravity effects. This would mean the atoms would fall up instead of down. Since this would be a violation of the law of conservation of energy it is unlikely, however many scientist still find the idea worth exploring.
The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.
Let’s get really, really, really small…
In the fourth century B.C. a Greek named Democritus (known as the “laughing philosopher” because he was always making fun of people) proposed a theory of matter that remained uncontested well into the 19th century. (This was before he went mad and blinded himself with hot glass in an effort to heighten his intellectual acuity.)
Anyway, Democritus suggested that all matter is made up of tiny indestructible pieces that he named atomos, meaning undivided. Today it’s known that atoms can certainly be broken up into subatomic particles, and those particles can be broken into more particles, and so on. (Image credit: Flickr user edgeplot)
AND THEN THERE WERE THREE
For about 2,200 years, scientists were happy enough with the idea that matter was made up of atoms. This all changed in 1886 when E. Goldstein discovered the positively charged particle that he named “proton”, after the Greek root proto, meaning “first”, since it was the first subatomic particle ever to be discovered.
Shortly after that, in 1897, the English physicist J.J. Thomson (who also only used his initials -is it some sort of club?) discovered negatively charged particles that he called “corpuscles,” which today are known as electrons.
In 1932, English scientist Sir James Chadwick (finally, a man with a real name!) discovered the neutron, the subatomic particle that lacks a charge.
THREE QUARKS FOR MUSTER MARK!
Of course, scientists were not content to stop at having three subatomic particles -they’re funny that way- so they feverishly looked for more. And sure enough, by splitting a proton or a neutron, smaller subatomic particle were created. These particle were named “quarks” in 1964 by scientist Murray Gell-Mann, who got the name from the following quote in James Joyce’s novel Finnegan’s Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark/And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.”
This picture shows what hydrogen atoms might look like if we could see them.
The chart above shows the appearance of a single hydrogen atom in a few of its lowest excited states. In each of those states, the electron is found in a different orbital, some of which have unfamiliar shapes. But even the term “shape” is a little funny for something that you can’t hold in your hand. These are actually probability density plots, which show the likelihood of observing the electron in any one position at a given time– and more correctly, 2D projections of 3D probability densities.
So even the humble hydrogen atom can be a bit complex. Fortunately, we have advanced technology that can help us cut though the quantum mechanical haze: Cookies!
What we can see (and taste) are cookies made to resemble the shapes of the hydrogen atoms in the chart. The folks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories made these cookies and will show you how you can make them, too! Link
The Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah has created an interactive feature that allows you to see the relative size of small objects, starting with a coffee bean and magnifying down to a carbon atom. Click on the link and use the sliding bar at the bottom of the application to zoom in.
Link via Radley Balko | Image: U.S. Department of Energy
