There Are Over 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Atoms In A Drop Of Water

Fact of the day: There are over 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (approx.) atoms in a drop of water.

Particles.
They are almost everything in the universe.
From the computer that I am writing this with, to the light coming through my window from a star millions of lightyears away. They are made of particles.

As I have briefly mentioned in one of my previous posts, particles have a wave property. This is called the wave-particle duality. Every particle has a wavelength. Even carbon 'buckyballs' (a molecule that is a ball of 60 carbon atoms) have been measured to have wavelengths. Apparently, a tennis ball has a wavelength between 10^-33 metres and 10^-35 metres (this must have been calculated, not measured).

Despite the wave-particle duality, most different forms of matter and force carriers are classified by their particle type. All of the discovered fundamental particles (they cannot be split apart into new particles) are in the Standard Model Of Elementary Particles.

In the next few posts I will be going through some of the 'non-fundamental' particles, and then the Standard Model.


(above) The Standard Model Of Elementary Particles

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