Monday, August 09, 2010

A Brief Review of Atoms .... After A Flirt At A Supermarket

I initially didn't know what to make of this. It started out with a story of an 8-year old calling the woman behind him "old". I think most men would get a slap on the face for doing that. Still, it turned into a rather humorous flirting.

And if you can get past that, there's a rather concise description of atoms, especially the role of neutrons in atoms! I suppose the "connection" here is that both the boy and neutrons are "social butterfly".

Er..... oookaayyy.....

I'm guessing that this is part of a series, and this is one of the middle article.

Zz.

1 comment:

Kent Leung said...

Strange start to the article! The metaphor is quite nice actually. Technically, though, the kid's "charm" should be bringing together 2 members of the same sex in a gay relationship. Male & Female are more like matter & anti-matter in this metaphor. They can only form short-lived positronium!

This metaphor extends well because the child, the neutron, on it's own would disintegrate (beta-decay of the free neutron) in approximately 15mins. It is only by strongly interacting with one or more "parents" can the child hope to stay alive.

Stable systems only exists when there are approximately equal number of parents & children in the system. Disproportionately too many of either means the family nuclei will decay away!