If I can’t find my keys, they could be on the counter, or in the kitchen table hiding under some junk mail. Or maybe I left them hanging on the door. Until I find them, I obviously can’t say which. It’s a bit like sealing a radioactive atom in a box and leaving it isolated: until I open the box I can’t say whether it decayed. Sounds familiar?
Particles are strange. In more than one way: for example they behave as if they were spinning, like a top. But they aren’t moving at all. Even if they were, trying to imagine how some of them “spin” would probably melt your brain. The property that measures this “spinning” (though nothing is moving at all here!) is, creatively, called spin.
Want to name an element on the periodic table? Piece of cake! Just follow this simple, step-by-step guide. The first thing you have to do is to discover an element. At the moment, the periodic table has no blank spots to be filled: all elements with 118 or fewer protons have been found already. Though luck. Moreover, since very crowded nuclei don’t stick together for … Continue reading How to discover an element
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