The Science of Discworld Revised Edition by Terry Pratchett Page A
Authors: Terry Pratchett
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neutrons – for example oxygen has eight of each, and 8 + 8 = 16, the atomic weight.
Atoms are incredibly small by human standards – about a hundred millionth of an inch (250 millionths of a centimetre) across for an atom of lead. Their constituent particles, however, are considerably smaller. By bouncing atoms off each other, physicists found that they behave as if the protons and neutrons occupy a tiny region in the middle – the nucleus – but the electrons are spread outside the nucleus over what, comparatively speaking, is a far bigger region. For a while, the atom was pictured as being rather like a tiny solar system, with the nucleus playing the role of the sun and the electrons orbiting it like planets. However, this model didn’t work very well – for example, an electron is a moving charge, and according to classical physics a moving charge emits radiation, so the model predicted that within a split second every electron in an atom would radiate away all of its energy and spiral into the nucleus. With the kind of physics that developed from Isaac Newton’s epic discoveries, atoms built like solar systems just don’t work. Nevertheless, this is the public myth, the lie-to-children that automatically springs to mind. It is endowed with so much narrativium that we can’t eradicate it.
After a lot of argument, the physicists who worked with matter on very small scales decided to hang on to the solar system model and throw away Newtonian physics, replacing it with quantum theory. Ironically, the solar system model of the atom
still
didn’t work terribly well, but it survived for long enough to help get quantum theory off the ground. According to quantum theory the protons, neutrons, and electrons that make an atom don’t have precise locations at all – they’re kind of smeared out. But you can say
how much
they are smeared out, and the protons and neutrons are smeared out over a tiny region near the middle of the atom, whereas the electrons are smeared out all over it.
Whatever the physical model, everyone agreed all along that the chemical properties of an atom depend mainly on its electrons, because the electrons are on the outside, so atoms can stick together by sharing electrons. When they stick together they form molecules, and that’s chemistry. Since an atom is electrically neutral overall, the number of electrons must equal the number of protons, and it is this ‘atomic number’,
not
the atomic weight, that organizes the periodicities found by Mendeleev. However, the atomic weight is usually about twice the atomic number, because the number of neutrons in an atom is pretty close to the number of protons for quantum reasons, so you get much the same ordering whichever quantity you use. Nevertheless, it is the atomic number that makes more sense of the chemistry and explains the periodicity. It turns out that period eight is indeed important, because the electrons live in a series of ‘shells’, like Russian dolls, one inside the other, and until you get some way up the list of elements a complete shell contains eight electrons.
Further along, the shells get bigger, so the period gets bigger too . At least, that’s what Joseph (J. J.) Thompson said in 1904. The modern theory is quantum and more complicated, with far more than three ‘fundamental’ particles, and the calculations are much harder, but they have much the same implications. Like most science, an initially simple story became more complicated as it was developed and headed rapidly towards the Magical Event Horizon for most people.
But even the simplified story explains a lot of otherwise baffling things. For instance, if the atomic weight is the number of protons plus neutrons, how come atomic weight isn’t always a whole number? What about chlorine, for instance, with atomic weight 35.453? It turns out there are two different kinds of chlorine. One kind has 17 protons and 18 neutrons (and 17 electrons, naturally, the same as
Atoms are incredibly small by human standards – about a hundred millionth of an inch (250 millionths of a centimetre) across for an atom of lead. Their constituent particles, however, are considerably smaller. By bouncing atoms off each other, physicists found that they behave as if the protons and neutrons occupy a tiny region in the middle – the nucleus – but the electrons are spread outside the nucleus over what, comparatively speaking, is a far bigger region. For a while, the atom was pictured as being rather like a tiny solar system, with the nucleus playing the role of the sun and the electrons orbiting it like planets. However, this model didn’t work very well – for example, an electron is a moving charge, and according to classical physics a moving charge emits radiation, so the model predicted that within a split second every electron in an atom would radiate away all of its energy and spiral into the nucleus. With the kind of physics that developed from Isaac Newton’s epic discoveries, atoms built like solar systems just don’t work. Nevertheless, this is the public myth, the lie-to-children that automatically springs to mind. It is endowed with so much narrativium that we can’t eradicate it.
After a lot of argument, the physicists who worked with matter on very small scales decided to hang on to the solar system model and throw away Newtonian physics, replacing it with quantum theory. Ironically, the solar system model of the atom
still
didn’t work terribly well, but it survived for long enough to help get quantum theory off the ground. According to quantum theory the protons, neutrons, and electrons that make an atom don’t have precise locations at all – they’re kind of smeared out. But you can say
how much
they are smeared out, and the protons and neutrons are smeared out over a tiny region near the middle of the atom, whereas the electrons are smeared out all over it.
Whatever the physical model, everyone agreed all along that the chemical properties of an atom depend mainly on its electrons, because the electrons are on the outside, so atoms can stick together by sharing electrons. When they stick together they form molecules, and that’s chemistry. Since an atom is electrically neutral overall, the number of electrons must equal the number of protons, and it is this ‘atomic number’,
not
the atomic weight, that organizes the periodicities found by Mendeleev. However, the atomic weight is usually about twice the atomic number, because the number of neutrons in an atom is pretty close to the number of protons for quantum reasons, so you get much the same ordering whichever quantity you use. Nevertheless, it is the atomic number that makes more sense of the chemistry and explains the periodicity. It turns out that period eight is indeed important, because the electrons live in a series of ‘shells’, like Russian dolls, one inside the other, and until you get some way up the list of elements a complete shell contains eight electrons.
Further along, the shells get bigger, so the period gets bigger too . At least, that’s what Joseph (J. J.) Thompson said in 1904. The modern theory is quantum and more complicated, with far more than three ‘fundamental’ particles, and the calculations are much harder, but they have much the same implications. Like most science, an initially simple story became more complicated as it was developed and headed rapidly towards the Magical Event Horizon for most people.
But even the simplified story explains a lot of otherwise baffling things. For instance, if the atomic weight is the number of protons plus neutrons, how come atomic weight isn’t always a whole number? What about chlorine, for instance, with atomic weight 35.453? It turns out there are two different kinds of chlorine. One kind has 17 protons and 18 neutrons (and 17 electrons, naturally, the same as
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