Page 15 - Miracles Within the Molecule

hen ev er you grasp a door han dle, shake hands with a
friend, or pat your dog, the sen sa tions that arise in your
hand are noth ing more than the inter ac tion of the elec -
trons in the mol e cu les com pris ing your hand with the elec trons in the
atoms com pris ing the door han dle, your friend's hand, or the dog's fur.
The strong wind that blows out side in stormy weath er is actu al ly no
more than mol e cu les that com prise the air approach ing at high speed
and strik ing the atoms that com prise you. The boil ing of water in a ket -
tle is the rapid move ment of its mol e cu les, trans form ing from a liq uid to
a gas under the effect of heat. In short, every thing in the uni verse, great
or small, con sists of atoms, and what we per ceive as heat or cold is the
result of their swift or slow vibra tions.
What makes atoms so mirac u lous is their extraor di na ri ly small size
and the fea tures they pos sess. The diam e ter of the atom meas ures
around one mil lionth of a mil li me ter (1 mil li me ter = 0.039 of an inch). To
help you to bet ter under stand 100 mil lion atoms placed side by side
would make a line only 1 cen ti me ter long. A sin gle page of this book
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you are read ing is just 1 mil lion atoms thick. When you real ize that
atoms make up every thing in the uni verse, with out excep tion—the
giant spi ral neb u lae with their mil lions of stars, the plan ets, the Earth's
moun tains and seas—makes the extraor di na ry mir a cle here even more
appar ent.
Another aston ish ing fact about the minute atoms is that
99.9999999% of its tiny vol ume actu al ly con sists of empty space! The
remain ing por tion, of the atom—less than 0.1%—con sists of pro -
tons, neu trons, elec trons, which are in turn com posed of var i -
ous sub a tom ic par ti cles. The neu trons and pro tons are fixed at
the cen ter of the atom and make up its nucle us. Yet the vol -
ume of the nucle us is just one ten bil lionth of the atom's vol ume.
In con stant rev o lu tion around this nucle us are the elec trons, are so
small that under an elec tron micro scope their image is no more
than a cloud of dust. Their mass is just 1/1,840 of that of a pro ton.
In order to bet ter under stand this ratio, imag ine that you have

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