Here is a question. What is between individual atoms, and how are they held together over such proportionally large areas?

Quote from Steiner

Here is a question. What is between individual atoms, and how are they held together over such proportionally large areas?

They're held together by magnetism are they not?

That's why some parts are negatively charged whilst others are positively charged. Nothing needs to be physically connecting the subatomic particles.


And that's just to put it in really really simplified terms. I don't feel like sciencing right now.

Electrons are held to the nucleus by gravitational force. That's all I remember.

Actually, chemical bonds hold atoms together.


Google:

* holds atoms together

van der waals forces, hydrogen bonds, covalent bonds, ionic bonds, dipole-dipole bonds

it's not magnetism.

Yeah I know all that, but what is between the atoms, a vacuum?

Are they held together at all?

Gravity.. And the attraction of negative and positive particles.

Quote from Steiner

Yeah I know all that, but what is between the atoms, a vacuum?

Oh, you mean, what's in the space between the molecules in, for example, the air?

Quote from Steiner

Yeah I know all that, but what is between the atoms, a vacuum?

yeah, i guess so. i mean, there are electrons flying around them, and if the two atoms are bonded then the electrons spend more time in the space between those atoms than anywhere else, but that's it.

a vacuum is just a space without any air in it, right? and air is made up of atoms. so in between atoms there isn't any material, just those atoms' electrons and a bunch of forces.

Well, there are basically two things that hold it together. Two forces, that is. The first of these has to do with electric charge. Electric charge comes in two varieties: positive and negative. The main carriers of positive charge are protons, while the main carriers of negative charge are electrons. (Within protons and neutrons, the quarks themselves carry charge, but this is only important to us in that the net charge of a proton or neutron is equal to the sum of the charges of all its quarks: zero for a neutron, and a small positive amount for a proton.) Every proton carries exactly the same amount of positive charge, and every electron carries a negative charge exactly opposite that of a proton. There are other particles with electric charge, but they tend to live only a very short time before they decay, and so they're mostly unimportant for atoms.

Quote from pagan

a vacuum is just a space without any air in it, right?

Well, technically a vacuum is just a space without any anything in it.

Most of the universe is empty space. Most of the Earth is empty space. Most of your body is empty space. Atoms are held together by strings with velcro on the ends, but they're too small to even be seen by atoms(if they had eyes).

http://aether.lbl.gov/elements/stellar/strong/strong.html
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/sun/Solar_interior/Nuclear_Reactions/Nuclear_forces/strong.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_

All it is is energy. There is more energy than actual matter around us(unless you convert matter into energy, which is cheating). You can liken a human to an empty room with a hot dust cloud in the middle. You barely see the dust particles themselves but the cloud is there. Slightly less noticeable by humans would be the temperature difference. But that temperature difference is what keeps the particles floating.

Blah, blah, I made some kind of a point.

So we are pretty much made up of energy >_>

I think, yeah.

I can't think clearly right now.