What is matter made of?
Photos by Jene Yeo, Nathan Dumlao, and
Bill Jelen.
Greek origins
Leucippus
and his student Democritus (5th century BC) considered the possibility of
dividing a chunk of gold once, twice, many times and asked...
image: The young Rembrandt as Democritus the laughing philosopher
How long can this go on?
Either:
- You could keep dividing things forever, or else,
- you reach some smallest, indivisible entity, which cannot be divided further.
They found 1.) distasteful, so chose to believe that
$\Rightarrow$ All matter is made of "atoms": something which can not be further divided.
What observations supported this conclusion?
Scientists are still entranced by beauty
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."
Frank Wilczek, who came up with a theory for the "strong" force, binding nucleons, views his research as a quest for _beauty_.