You've Never Touched Anything

Yow fam, picture this -

Imagine two introverted people placed in a small room and told to look at each other and talk.

What happens? They get extremely uncomfortable, start backing away and try to maintain as much personal space as humanly possible, right? 😂

Well, believe it or not... that is exactly what happens at the atomic level when you try to touch somethin!

Right now, you think you're holding your phone? or sitting on chair? I hate to break it to you, but.... NO! You r not! You haven't been touching your phone and you are not sitting on that chair.

In fact, you have been living an invisible lie your entire life, and at this very moment, YOU R LEVITATING! 🐦

Before you call me crazy and scroll away, let's talk abt the super weird (but 100% real) physics behind this :3

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Secret World of Invisible Forcefields

Remember high school science class? We all know that everything around us (our hands + screens + pizza + coffee bla bla bla) is made of atoms.

And what's orbiting on the outer edge of every single atom? Negative particles called Electrons (not look like my drawing 😉)

Now, think back to our introverts behavier at the party:

When you try to push your finger against your phone screen

1. the electrons on your hand get extremely close to the electrons on the screen

2. since like charges repel each other (negative vs. negative), they hate being near each other!

3. they aggresively push back. in physics, we call this Electrostatic Repulsion

No matter how hard you press your finger against the screen, those electrones will never let your hand's atoms actually touch the screen's atoms. They act like an invisible subatomic forcefield keeping everything apart. there is always a tiny, subatomic gap between you and whatever you think you are touching!

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Then why does it feel solid? { brain.exe has stopped working }

If our atoms never actually touch anything, why does it feel solid?

It's all a clever trick played by your brain 🌚

When you press your hand down, your skin's nerve endings detect the invisible force field pushing back. They send a quick message to your brain saying:

Hey! Resistance detected! We must be touching something solid!

Ur brain interprets this electromagnetic resistance as touch, even though nothing is actually touching. So, legally speaking...

Next time you accidentally break your mom's favourite cup and she gets mad, just tell her:

Mom, technically, according to quantum physics, my hand never actually touched the cup. It was just electron repulsion! so legally, I am innocent!

(disclaimer - physics will not save you from a flying slipper, though! 😂👪)

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Woah, hold your horses, Albert Einstein! For those who want pure, unfiltered science backstory, lets's get quantum (if u r not, you can skip this part :) )

The hardcore science (Lennard-Jones and Pauli)

1. Pauli Exclusion principle: Beyond just Coulomb repulsion, There's a stronger quantum effect. Electrons are fermions, and pauli's Exclusion Principle states that no two electrons can occupy the same exact quantum state simultaneously. When electron clouds try to overlap, they create a massive repulsive pressure known as DEGENERACY PRESSURE. This is what really keeps atoms seperate

2. Lennard-Jones Potential: This is a physical chemistry model graphing forces between particles. As atoms get closer, the repulsive term become infinitely powerful, creating a fixed, minimum equilibrium distance that can never be breached

3. Experimental Proof (AFM): the Atomic Force Microscope scans samples with a super sharp tip without touching it, measuring the microscopic repulsive forces between atoms to to construct 3D images :)

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So yeah, you have lived your entire life floating on an invisible cushion of electromagnetic forces! You are literally a quantum levitating wizard hovering above your bed, chair and floor every single day 😅

Physics is wild, isn't it? Lemme know in the comments if it broke ur brain a lil bit today, Thenk you <3

#proofofbrain #pob #science #physics #education #art #blog #ecency