4:22 am and the clock goes tick-tick-tick Musings
How small is the smallest you can get. I think I may have pondered over shrinking and the conservation of mass problem, if I can shrink by half, or even to an inch high, what does do for your mass. Anyway it’s an intriguing thought about what is the smallest thing you could possibly shrink to, or observe.
You’d think it was an atom.
But an atom is typically made up of three main parts: protons, neutrons and electrons.
So, what is a Proton made up of? A proton is made of two “up” quarks and one “down” quark.
So what are Gluons? Gluons are what hold quarks together to make bigger particals.
So, that’s it?
Probably not. I haven’t even though about Leptons yet. The difference between quarks and leptons is that quarks interact with the strong nuclear force, whereas leptons do not.
I’ve got to start thinking about the Strong Nuclear Force, or should I be thinking there is also a weak one? Perhaps not though, they’re not bit’s they’re just adjuncts, things. I’m here for the things.
Also, whilst I was thinking about all this why is that that things don’t change, or why are things always things. Atoms are made up of bits of this and bits of that, but I’m tested by the thought that why is that so. Why is, for instance, Iron always Iron, seems quite handy that it doesn’t have a problem at the atomic level where is drops one, or gains one of the bits and becomes, for example, Marble. Which then confused me as turning lead into gold is the Alchemist dream isn’t it?
And then I got on to trying to understand elements. And all I go is why are they stable, if you put there lots of elements together, why don’t they merge and made a new element?
each of more than one hundred substances that cannot be chemically interconverted or broken down into simpler substances and are primary constituents of matter. Each element is distinguished by its atomic number, i.e. the number of protons in the nuclei of its atoms
So why don’t protons jump ship? Isn’t alchemy about injecting or mashing in more protons into something to make a new thing
You can not create new elements by mixing different compounds. In order to create a new element you have to change the number of protons in a nucleus. It is possible to do this but it requires bombarding various elements, one with the other, by means of high energy particle accelerators.
So you can do it, but why, in a universe that is in entropy, and decay, doesn’t this just happen. I mean it’d be inconvenient and awkward, and I’m not sure I’ve thought this through, because I came across this. The most expensive natural element is francium, but it decays so quickly it can’t be collected to be sold.
it decays? into what ? The only comparable element is astatine, whose most stable natural isotope, astatine-219 (the alpha daughter of francium-223), has a half-life of 56 seconds, although synthetic astatine-210 is much longer-lived with a half-life of 8.1 hours. All isotopes of francium decay into astatine, radium, or radon.
An I still don’t know where the bits go.
A life just as ordinary 