Kind: captions
Language: en
Hi, and welcome to Veritassium, an
online science video blog. I'd like to
take on scientific topics all the way
from the simplest to the most complex.
So, a good place to start, I think, is
with a problem considered by a famous
physicist, Richard Feman. He asked, "If
all the world's scientific information,
except for one sentence, were destroyed
in some cataclysmic event, which single
statement would contain the most
scientific information for future
generations?"
His conclusion was that it is the atomic
hypothesis.
The atomic hypothesis states that all
things are made up of atoms, tiny
particles that are in perpetual motion.
They attract each other when a little
distance apart, but repel if squeezed
together.
That statement is incredibly important
to understand if you want to understand
most of the rest of science because
everything is made of atoms, including
you and me and the opera house and the
Harbor Bridge and the water and the
trees and the grass and the air and the
clouds and well, you get the idea.
Everything is made out of atoms. So,
it's really important to understand the
atomic concept if you're going to
understand the rest of science.
The idea that everything is made of tiny
particles has been around for thousands
of years. The oldest recorded texts are
in uh Greece and India. In fact, the
word atom comes from the Greek autotomos
meaning literally uncutable.
So the idea that they had was if you
took a piece of matter like this piece
of aluminium foil, you could cut it in
half
[Applause]
and in half again each time reducing the
number of atoms by half. But the idea
was you could not go on doing that
indefinitely. For there would come a
point when you have only a single atom
left and it is uncutable.
It's an atom.
How many times do you think I could cut
this A4 sheet of aluminium in half
before I reach a single atom?