Molecular structure of matter
In any of the large libraries of the world, rooms and bookshelves stretch, it seems, endlessly. The number of volumes in the Library of Congress amounts to tens of millions. Each of them presents a variety of stories, detailed analyzes, historical documents - all with their own opinion. But all these millions of books written in English consist of only a few tens of thousands of words, and each word consists of a combination of only 26 letters - from A to Z [ plus spaces, punctuation and numbers - approx. trans. ].
In the meantime, we all live surrounded by a huge and amazing variety of materials - including the one from which many types of biological structures are created that make up our bodies and all the bodies of animals, plants and other living creatures. The planet on which we live consists of different kinds of stones, some of which are hard and fragile, some plastic, with different colors and textures. In addition to water, we have alcohol, acids, sugars and oils in various forms. Cooking in the oven produces a variety of flavors that we breathe from the air. To the salts, chalk and alloys need to add synthetic materials, including a variety of plastics. But it is important to remember that the enormous wealth of the Materials Library consists of a small (albeit rather diverse) range of molecules, which, in turn, consist of just a hundred atoms — elements from H to U and beyond (from hydrogen to uranium and beyond).
The complexity of a written language like English is based on words, and the complexity of materials begins with molecules. In the same way, instructions for building a huge set of biological forms can be encoded in DNA — deoxyribonucleic acid — specifically, in the threads of its three-molecular syllables composed of four simple molecules, nucleobases. The reason for complexity is based on a simple mathematical fact - a wide variety of combinations can arise from a small number of ingredients. One ingredient is not enough. Only ten different words can be made from the letter “a”, the length of which will not exceed ten letters: “a”, “aa”, “aaa”, and so on. But from 26 letters, 26 2 two-letter words can already be obtained, that is, 676, and ten-letter words - and at all 141 167 095 653 376, much more than is required for the language. Just a few tens of thousands of words, chosen from a multitude of millions or billions of potential, are enough to create all of English literature. The same principles of exponential growth in the number of combinations allow our environment to be formed from a total of hundreds of types of atoms, which can be made up into innumerable molecules that vary in size from a few atoms to hundreds and thousands.
Starting with words, or molecules, you can move in two directions for research purposes. You can try to understand how complex objects are collected from their ingredients: what lies behind the existence of a separate book or set of books? Where did this material or material class come from? Or you can move in a different direction, determining the source of letters and atoms, the main building blocks.
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The purpose of this and subsequent articles is to answer the second question, from the molecules and down to their origins. Of course, it is very interesting to study the huge variety of materials found in nature, of which there are as many as there are books in the Library of Congress. But, on the other hand, the origin of molecules and atoms are less immense subject. Of course, one cannot say that the answer to these questions is simple and straightforward. It reveals many surprising and unexpected details of atomic, nuclear, and particle (or high-energy) physics. As in the case of the source of the letters of the alphabet, the consequences of finding an answer to this question turn out to be more and more interesting than it might have been initially thought. It leads to discoveries that are not limited to the simple properties of materials. He leads the physicist to the understanding of light, the Sun and other stars, the history of the Earth, space and time, and the Universe, on which the Earth and the Sun travel.
But before that you need to consider a couple more questions. How do we know that all materials are made of molecules? Historically, the answer to this question was obtained through complex logical chains and a huge variety of scientific experiments. Until recently, the existence of molecules could only be guessed, not directly, but rather convincingly enough, based on clever scientific analyzes and chemical experiments. Today we can give a more straightforward answer - because today we can “see” the molecules . We see them through microscopes, although they are not such classic types that can be put on the table and peek at them through the eyepieces. These are atomic force microscopes , and their way of looking is more like reading Braille; but they perform their task. They allow scientists to take photos of the materials, examine in detail their structure, confirming previous predictions made to her account. They even allowed to solve the previous riddles of specific molecules. New methods allow you to directly check all indirect arguments. Not that we doubted them, as they were so often successfully used in predicting the results of chemical reactions and in developing and creating new materials! And, nevertheless, it is nice to know that this discussion is not abstract: molecules really exist, and with the help of modern technologies we can discover them directly.
In the next article, we will look at atoms, what they consist of, and how molecules are made from them.
In the meantime, we all live surrounded by a huge and amazing variety of materials - including the one from which many types of biological structures are created that make up our bodies and all the bodies of animals, plants and other living creatures. The planet on which we live consists of different kinds of stones, some of which are hard and fragile, some plastic, with different colors and textures. In addition to water, we have alcohol, acids, sugars and oils in various forms. Cooking in the oven produces a variety of flavors that we breathe from the air. To the salts, chalk and alloys need to add synthetic materials, including a variety of plastics. But it is important to remember that the enormous wealth of the Materials Library consists of a small (albeit rather diverse) range of molecules, which, in turn, consist of just a hundred atoms — elements from H to U and beyond (from hydrogen to uranium and beyond).
The complexity of a written language like English is based on words, and the complexity of materials begins with molecules. In the same way, instructions for building a huge set of biological forms can be encoded in DNA — deoxyribonucleic acid — specifically, in the threads of its three-molecular syllables composed of four simple molecules, nucleobases. The reason for complexity is based on a simple mathematical fact - a wide variety of combinations can arise from a small number of ingredients. One ingredient is not enough. Only ten different words can be made from the letter “a”, the length of which will not exceed ten letters: “a”, “aa”, “aaa”, and so on. But from 26 letters, 26 2 two-letter words can already be obtained, that is, 676, and ten-letter words - and at all 141 167 095 653 376, much more than is required for the language. Just a few tens of thousands of words, chosen from a multitude of millions or billions of potential, are enough to create all of English literature. The same principles of exponential growth in the number of combinations allow our environment to be formed from a total of hundreds of types of atoms, which can be made up into innumerable molecules that vary in size from a few atoms to hundreds and thousands.
Starting with words, or molecules, you can move in two directions for research purposes. You can try to understand how complex objects are collected from their ingredients: what lies behind the existence of a separate book or set of books? Where did this material or material class come from? Or you can move in a different direction, determining the source of letters and atoms, the main building blocks.
')
The purpose of this and subsequent articles is to answer the second question, from the molecules and down to their origins. Of course, it is very interesting to study the huge variety of materials found in nature, of which there are as many as there are books in the Library of Congress. But, on the other hand, the origin of molecules and atoms are less immense subject. Of course, one cannot say that the answer to these questions is simple and straightforward. It reveals many surprising and unexpected details of atomic, nuclear, and particle (or high-energy) physics. As in the case of the source of the letters of the alphabet, the consequences of finding an answer to this question turn out to be more and more interesting than it might have been initially thought. It leads to discoveries that are not limited to the simple properties of materials. He leads the physicist to the understanding of light, the Sun and other stars, the history of the Earth, space and time, and the Universe, on which the Earth and the Sun travel.
But before that you need to consider a couple more questions. How do we know that all materials are made of molecules? Historically, the answer to this question was obtained through complex logical chains and a huge variety of scientific experiments. Until recently, the existence of molecules could only be guessed, not directly, but rather convincingly enough, based on clever scientific analyzes and chemical experiments. Today we can give a more straightforward answer - because today we can “see” the molecules . We see them through microscopes, although they are not such classic types that can be put on the table and peek at them through the eyepieces. These are atomic force microscopes , and their way of looking is more like reading Braille; but they perform their task. They allow scientists to take photos of the materials, examine in detail their structure, confirming previous predictions made to her account. They even allowed to solve the previous riddles of specific molecules. New methods allow you to directly check all indirect arguments. Not that we doubted them, as they were so often successfully used in predicting the results of chemical reactions and in developing and creating new materials! And, nevertheless, it is nice to know that this discussion is not abstract: molecules really exist, and with the help of modern technologies we can discover them directly.
In the next article, we will look at atoms, what they consist of, and how molecules are made from them.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/403591/
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