Thread: rathurford's result

As Rathurford said that an atom is mostly empty space.
So that means our length is not what we have measured ( i.e my length is not 1.80 m ) .
I know that an atom's diameter is 10^-10 and the diameter of an atom is 10^-14 , without need to know the no. of atoms
How u can know ur real length???

Originally Posted by almirza

As Rathurford said that an atom is mostly empty space.
So that means our length is not what we have measured ( i.e my length is not 1.80 m ) .
I know that an atom's diameter is 10^-10 and the diameter of an atom is 10^-14 , without need to know the no. of atoms
How u can know ur real length???

Put in short, no way.

It ll wil depend upon what measure unit you use. But once your measure unti is small eough, your total length will be varyign wildly (depending on how electrons are locaed) and anyway Heisenberg's principle of indetermiantion will spoil your fun as soon as you start dealing with individual particles.

A good approach would be to consider you real length as "the amount of space which no other solid matter can occupy". That could be measured, houm, to the micrometers range, if we didn't accounted for the elasticity of cells.

It actually is a variation of the old question, "how long is the English coast?". :wink: