• Question: what would you do if you could see atoms

    Asked by Honey-G on 4 Nov 2024.
    • Photo: Emilia Arguello

      Emilia Arguello answered on 4 Nov 2024:


      On one hand it would be so cool to finally be able to see with our own eyes something that has puzzled humans for decades. But I feel like I would probably also go crazy! Atoms are so so tiny that there are incredibly large numbers of them even in the smallest bits of matter. To see and process so much information all at once would probably make my head hurt!

      If I could see atoms and, for instance, I would be looking at a glass of water, I would be looking at 2.5 x10^25 atoms of oxygen and hydrogen! (this number is more than 1 trillion times larger than the number of stars we have in our entire galaxy!) Imagine seeing all these tiny atoms, so many of them all together, vibrating and interacting with each other in the water… i take it would be so overwhelming! And that’s just assuming you’re just focusing on the liquid. The glass in which the water is contained will also have trillions and quadrillions of atoms. The air you breathe as well!

Comments