But it’s not random dancing – it’s more like ballroom dancing, where they move in set patterns, following steps laid down by a mathematical equation named after Erwin Schrödinger.Įlectrons are like a swarm of birds. In fact, electrons dance – there is no better word for it. Instead, think of electrons like a swarm of bees or birds, where the individual motions are too fast to track, but you still see the shape of the overall swarm.

Unfortunately, much of what we are taught at school is simplified – electrons do not orbit the centre of an atom like planets around the sun, like you may have been taught. To explain why we must look at the electrons.

So why don’t our fingers just pass through atoms, and why doesn’t light get through the gaps? But even so, the nucleus at the centre would still be far too small to see and so would the electrons as they dance around it. If you imagine a table that is a billion times larger, its atoms would be the size of melons. Each of these atoms is each made up of an incredibly small nucleus and even smaller electrons, which move around at quite a distance from the centre. Chemist John Dalton proposed the theory that all matter and objects are made up of particles called atoms, and this is still accepted by the scientific community, almost two centuries later.

What is solid matter