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THE QUANTUM FIELD IS SMALL, VERY SMALL !

Ross Thompson
3 min readJan 19, 2022

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REALIZING THE DIMENSIONS OF QUANTUM MECHANICS.

ErAnger Pixabay

With all that is written and spoken about Quantum Mechanics these days, it is easy to forget just how small the Quantum field is. Very small, very very small — is the thing to keep in mind when considering Quantum Mechanics. Science writer Brian Clegg helps us get it into proportion. Quote: “The simple act of turning on a 100-watt light bulb will produce 100,000,000,000 photons (packets of energy that make up light) every billionth of a second.”

A Google search for ‘The scale of the subatomic realm,’ produced this quote: “Each atom is itself a composite that’s one tenth of a billionth of a meter across. Electrons hazily occupy much of the atom’s empty space. Protons and neutrons cluster in the atom’s nucleus, 100,000 times smaller than its atom, and are themselves composed of other stupendously small things: quarks and gluons and more. An electron may have no meaningful property of size but could be thought of as 10 million times smaller than the nucleus of the atom.” Did you notice your brain starts to hurt trying to get your mind around that?!

The number of atoms on the head of a pin is ten to the power of eighteen. That is 100,000,000,000,000,0000

One million atoms lined up, side by side would be about the length of this period (full stop) (.)

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Ross Thompson
Ross Thompson

Written by Ross Thompson

I am a New Zealand Citizen. living in Melbourne, Australia. I am a longtime Christian. I write kid’s fiction, and have non fiction published on various topics.

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