If atoms are 99,9% emptiness, how can they keep things together ? Like, if my skin is 99,9% emptiness, why is it able to keep blood and organs in it ?
In: Chemistry
It seems like you are thinking of protons and electrons in an atom as some sort hard, impenetrable bodies of a certain size — like tiny billiard balls. If you are under this impression, then you would think that contact forces between these billiard balls are the only real forces that exist — and so any action-at-a-distance, like gravity or magnetism — likely seems very mysterious to you.
Actually it’s the other way around. Everything in the universe is action at a distance. Contact forces are just an example of action over very tiny, tiny distances.
Atoms in a molecule or in a solid material are held together by electromagnetic forces — the electrons in one atom are attracted to the protons in the other atom, however the two atoms can’t get too close together or else the protons in the nucleus will start to repel each other. There is a certain distance where these attractive and repulsive forces cancel out, and that is what make atoms “bond” to each other.
This bond distance is much larger than the “size” of the proton and electron (actually protons and electrons don’t really have a “size” — again they’re not billiard balls, it’s better to think of them as fuzzy clouds). But still pretty tiny, in human terms. Depending on a lot of factors, these bonds might be so rigid that the atoms can’t move around at all (like in a solid), or they might allow for some viscosity (in a liquid), or they might be so weak as to be non-existent (as in a gas).
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