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Everything is made of atoms. That is the key hypothesis. The most important hypothesis in all of biology, for example, is that everything that animals do, atoms do. In other words, there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to…
People have wracked their brains for an explanation of benzene and how the celebrated man [Kekulé] managed to come up with the concept of the benzene theory. With regard to the last point especially, a friend of mine who is a farmer and has a lively interest in chemistry has asked me a question which I would like to…
Take water. It's simple, common, and vital. There are more molecules of water in an eight-ounce cup of the stuff than there are cups of water in all the world's oceans. Every cup that passes through a single person and eventually rejoins the world's water supply holds enough molecules to mix fifteen hundred of them…
Chemical analysis and synthesis go no farther than to the separation of particles one from another, and to their reunion. No new creation or destruction of matter is within the reach of chemical agency. We might as well attempt to introduce a new planet into the solar system, or to annihilate one already in existence…
The number of neutrons in an atom's nucleus is less fixed than the number of protons: many elements have different versions, called isotopes, with different numbers of neutrons. For example, there are three isotopes of carbon, called Carbon-12, Carbon-13 and Carbon-14. The numbers refer to the mass of the atom, which…
Equally vain is the suggestion that the spirit is immortal because it is shielded by life-preserving powers: or because it is unassailed by forces hostile to its survival; or because such forces, if they threaten, are somehow repelled before we are conscious of the threat. <Common sense makes it obvious that this…
SMall Atomes of themselves a World may make, As being subtle, and of every shape: And as they dance about, fit places finde, Such Formes as best agree, make every kinde. For when we build a house of Bricke, and Stone, [5] We lay them even, every one by one: And when we finde a gap that's big, or small, We seeke out…