3 ms·
But we are not talking about just nuclei here, we are also talking about the electron shells around it! And if electron shells are "mostly vacuum", then what is
by GolDDranks 4y ago
But we are not talking about just nuclei here, we are also talking about the electron shells around it! And if electron shells are "mostly vacuum", then what is electron degeneracy pressure? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_degeneracy_pressure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_degeneracy_pressure And why Prof. Phil Moriarty gets irked about the meme "things never truly touch each other"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0TNJrTlbBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0TNJrTlbBQ
- causi 4y agoRight. There's no such thing as "solid", it's just point particles and fields all the way down.
- GolDDranks 4y agoRather, what we think of as a "solid" has very different definition than what we would intuitively think. But in the end, that's just semantics. (According to the linked prof. Moriarty, the "boundary" of a solid is the point in space where quantum degeneracy pressure is in balance with van der Waals forces – so there is a well-defined boundary!) Also, I think that "point particles" are a rather illusory concept. More like, interactions between particles are highly localized when observed by a macroscopic classical observer.