Eli5 : If atoms are made of and separated by an incredible amount of empty space, why isn’t everything going through everything?
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you know the yoyo trick around the world? i want you to imagine somebody doing that, only instead of it going back to their hand, the yoyo is going around them constantly. now, imagine they have 6 hands, with 6 yoyos, all going in different directions. they all just barely miss each other going around and around, never stopping. now, imagine somebody else standing right next to them doing the exact same thing, with the yoyos of one just barely missing the yoyos of the other. what happens if these two people try to take a step closer to each other? those yoyos hit each other and tangle and knock each other away, right? those people each represent a single atom of carbon, with the yoyos being the electron clouds. if one person were to try to walk through the empty space of the cloud, they get knocked about by all the yoyos. nothing might be in a particular spot at a particular time, but anything can be coming from any direction to knock them away. now, something small enough and fast enough can and will pass through that cloud, like subatomic particles, shooting through like a bullet, but that’s getting into physics
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