Part 32 (1/2)

The Bricks of the Cosmos

More than two thousand years ago the first men of science, the Greeks of the cities of Asia Minor, speculated on the nature of matter. You can grind a piece of stone into dust. You can divide a spoonful of water into as many drops as you like. Apparently you can go on dividing as long as you have got apparatus fine enough for the work. But there must be a limit, these Greeks said, and so they supposed that all matter was ultimately composed of minute particles which were indivisible. That is the meaning of the Greek word ”atom.”

Like so many other ideas of these brilliant early Greek thinkers, the atom was a sound conception. We know to-day that matter is composed of atoms. But science was then so young that the way in which the Greeks applied the idea was not very profound. A liquid or a gas, they said, consisted of round, smooth atoms, which would not cling together. Then there were atoms with rough surfaces, ”hooky” surfaces, and these stuck together and formed solids. The atoms of iron or marble, for instance, were so very hooky that, once they got together, a strong man could not tear them apart. The Greeks thought that the explanation of the universe was that an infinite number of these atoms had been moving and mixing in an infinite s.p.a.ce during an infinite time, and had at last hit by chance on the particular combination which is our universe.

This was too simple and superficial. The idea of atoms was cast aside, only to be advanced again in various ways. It was the famous Manchester chemist, John Dalton, who restored it in the early years of the nineteenth century. He first definitely formulated the atomic theory as a scientific hypothesis. The whole physical and chemical science of that century was now based upon the atom, and it is quite a mistake to suppose that recent discoveries have discredited ”atomism.” An atom is the smallest particle of a chemical element. No one has ever seen an atom. Even the wonderful new microscope which has just been invented cannot possibly show us particles of matter which are a million times smaller than the breadth of a hair; for that is the size of atoms. We can weigh them and measure them, though they are invisible, and we know that all matter is composed of them. It is a new discovery that atoms are not indivisible. They consist themselves of still smaller particles, as we shall see. But the atoms exist all the same, and we may still say that they are the bricks of which the material universe is built.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo: Elliott & Fry._

SIR ERNEST RUTHERFORD

One of our most eminent physicists who has succeeded Sir J. J. Thomson as Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge. The modern theory of the structure of the atom is largely due to him.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo: Rischgitz Collection._

J. CLERK-MAXWELL

One of the greatest scientific men who have ever lived. He revolutionised physics with his electro-magnetic theory of light, and practically all modern researches have had their origin, direct or indirect, in his work. Together with Faraday he const.i.tutes one of the main scientific glories of the nineteenth century.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo: Ernest H. Mills._

SIR WILLIAM CROOKES

Sir William Crookes experimented on the electric discharge in vacuum tubes and described the phenomena as a ”fourth state of matter.” He was actually observing the flight of electrons, but he did not fully appreciate the nature of his experiments.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo: Photo Press_

PROFESSOR SIR W. H. BRAGG

One of the most distinguished physicists of the present day.]

But if we had some magical gla.s.s by means of which we could see into the structure of material things, we should not see the atoms put evenly together as bricks are in a wall. As a rule, two or more atoms first come together to form a larger particle, which we call a ”molecule.”

Single atoms do not, as a rule, exist apart from other atoms; if a molecule is broken up, the individual atoms seek to unite with other atoms of another kind or amongst themselves. For example, three atoms of oxygen form what we call ozone; two atoms of hydrogen uniting with one atom of oxygen form water. It is molecules that form the ma.s.s of matter; a molecule, as it has been expressed, is a little building of which atoms are the bricks.

In this way we get a useful first view of the material things we handle.

In a liquid the molecules of the liquid cling together loosely. They remain together as a body, but they roll over and away from each other.

There is ”cohesion” between them, but it is less powerful than in a solid. Put some water in a kettle over the lighted gas, and presently the tiny molecules of water will rush through the spout in a cloud of steam and scatter over the kitchen. The heat has broken their bond of a.s.sociation and turned the water into something like a gas; though we know that the particles will come together again, as they cool, and form once more drops of water.

In a gas the molecules have full individual liberty. They are in a state of violent movement, and they form no union with each other. If we want to force them to enter into the loose sort of a.s.sociation which molecules have in a liquid, we have to slow down their individual movements by applying severe cold. That is how a modern man of science liquefies gases. No power that we have will liquefy air at its ordinary temperature. In _very_ severe cold, on the other hand, the air will spontaneously become liquid. Some day, when the fires of the sun have sunk very low, the temperature of the earth will be less than -200 C.: that is to say, more than two hundred degrees Centigrade below freezing-point. It will sink to the temperature of the moon. Our atmosphere will then be an ocean of liquid air, 35 feet deep, lying upon the solidly frozen ma.s.ses of our water-oceans.

In a solid the molecules cling firmly to each other. We need a force equal to twenty-five tons to tear asunder the molecules in a bar of iron an inch thick. Yet the structure is not ”solid” in the popular sense of the word. If you put a piece of solid gold in a little pool of mercury, the gold will take in the mercury _between_ its molecules, as if it were porous like a sponge. The hardest solid is more like a lattice-work than what we usually mean by ”solid”; though the molecules are not fixed, like the bars of a lattice-work, but are in violent motion; they vibrate about equilibrium positions. If we could see right into the heart of a bit of the hardest steel, we should see billions of separate molecules, at some distance from each other, all moving rapidly to and fro.

This molecular movement can, in a measure, be made visible. It was noticed by a microscopist named Brown that, in a solution containing very fine suspended particles, the particles were in constant movement.

Under a powerful microscope these particles are seen to be violently agitated; they are each independently darting hither and thither somewhat like a lot of billiard b.a.l.l.s on a billiard table, colliding and bounding about in all directions. Thousands of times a second these encounters occur, and this lively commotion is always going on, this incessant colliding of one molecule with another is the normal condition of affairs; not one of them is at rest. The reason for this has been worked out, and it is now known that these particles move about because they are being incessantly bombarded by the molecules of the liquid. The molecules cannot, of course, be seen, but the fact of their incessant movement is revealed to the eye by the behaviour of the visible suspended particles. This incessant movement in the world of molecules is called the Brownian movement, and is a striking proof of the reality of molecular motions.

-- 2

The Wonder-World of Atoms