I know things are made of molecules but what keeps molecules together? What’s between them?
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There is nothing material between molecules. When molecules are held in a position, the forces holding them there are the aptly-named “inter-molecular forces”.
These forces often more or less boil down to electric fields and electrons refusing to occupy the same space.
It depends. For most gases there is nothing between them. It is a vacuum.
For liquids and solids intermolecular distances are similar to intramolecular forces. For example in water oxygen’s electrons will have a probability of being between an oxygen nucleus and its own hydrogen nucleus (a covalent bond) and there will be a probability the electron will be between the oxygen nucleus and a neighbouring hydrogen nucleus (a hydrogen bond).
For metals intermolecular and intramolecular electron density is the same since a metal crystal acts as a macromolecule of a visible size.
There’s some good answers here touching on probability fields and such, but since you are talking about *molecules* I’ll add,
Atoms are identified by their number of protons, which have a positive charge. This charge wants to be balanced, so it picks up electrons, which are negative to balance out.
The electrons spinning around a nucleus of an atom form a sort of shell- like a cloud of flies. They can create layers like this, and have a number of electrons/flies per layer. The outer shell electrons are called variance electrons, and really like to reach certain numbers, and which point the shell is full.
So when two atoms get near each other, those variance electrons sometimes hop into another atom’s shell- and if they don’t leave the first atom’s shell, those atoms now have a combo shell. The electron is attracted to both atoms. This attraction keeps the atoms together even though the nuclei don’t want to get too near each other.
The number of electrons in that outer shell gives you an idea of how reactive a substance will be. Some are just waiting for their shells to be complete and if you bring these together, they tend to combine easily. Some have just the right number of variance electrons and just won’t combine with anything. ( the noble gases are like this).
There’s nothing in between molecules, but there’s also a swarm of electron flies, zipping between clumps of proton poo, constantly trying to find their fly cloud balance.
Example: the simplest molecule is H2. It is made of two hydrogens. Hydrogen has one proton and one electron. But electrons like the number 2. So H combines with H so there’s 2 electrons in the shell around 2 separate protons. Helium has two fused protons and two electrons. It’s happy as is mostly, so stays that way. Just He.
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