eli5: On an atomic level, how does an atom ‘know’ it belongs to (for example) a sheet of paper but not the sheet of paper below it. Also how do scissors interact with the paper on an atomic level to cut it into two pieces.
In: Physics
At the atomic level, a single atom “belongs to something” as long as nothing kicks it out of place. It’s like playing with a grape inside a bowl:
If someone gives you a grape on a bowl, as long as you’re careful, you can move the bowl and the grape and it will never fall off and “the grape belongs to the bowl.
If you’re not careful or if you move the grape or the bowl too fast, the grape *might* fall of, and then “the grape no longer belongs to the bowl”
**Atoms are like grapes** and **molecules are like bowls**, but ***the bowl is also made of grapes that also are bowls***. Weird, right? We need to read that sentence again to try to understand!
If we think about paper, a single atom of paper is “inside a bowl made of paper atoms”, and unless you kick it with enough force you won’t be able to take that paper atom out. That’s because “the paper atoms that make the bowl” don’t let the paper atom escape.
Scissors work by pushing the atoms in the paper with enough force to take them out of their bowls. They do it in a way where only a few stops in the paper are pushed, and they are all close enough that you can separate the paper into two pieces.
We can think about it as a bunch of eggs on carton holders, the kind that can hold 100 or 144 eggs at a time:
Think about every egg as a single paper atom. If you start pushing eggs from a line or column, your hand becomes like a scissor that cuts trough paper.
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