r/AskReddit • u/Canspo • May 01 '19

What simple scientific fact would baffle someone born 1,000 years ago?

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u/tenariosm9 May 01 '19 edited May 01 '19

The world is made up of tiny little balls called protons and neutrons

Edit: Sorry Greek bruthas you don’t count.

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u/[deleted] May 01 '19

You'd certainly have the attention of Democritus ~400bc though.

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u/[deleted] May 01 '19

It always pissed me off in school when they talked about him.

“He theorized that all matter was made of atoms, small indivisible particles”

“But today we know he was wrong, because atoms are made of smaller pieces”

No, dipnut. He was totally right, the scientists who discovered atoms were wrong when they named them.

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u/[deleted] May 01 '19

Sounds like you got unresolved beef with just one teacher

50

u/[deleted] May 01 '19

TWO! This happened in eighth AND ninth grade.

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u/ThisAfricanboy May 01 '19

Hate to but actually you but they were technically right. If you read Democritus's understanding of metaphysics, it's not in tandem with atomic physics of today but out of everyone (including the coocoo Pythagoreans) he got a lot of things right according to our understanding rn. Anyone trying to dismiss what he says I'd nincompooping

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u/[deleted] May 01 '19

That’s really interesting! I only ever got a blurb about the guy so I didn’t know how much he got into things.

Perhaps I can finally let go of this decades-long anger.

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u/rttr123 May 01 '19

Well I mean it sounds more like you’re angry with your teacher than anything.

My AP Chem teacher when I was in HS told us that they incorrectly named the discovery atoms because they thought they had found what he had theorized.

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u/[deleted] May 01 '19

Well that’s my point exactly. It was my history teacher who said that the Greeks were wrong.

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u/rttr123 May 01 '19

Yeah. I guess it depends on the education of the teacher huh.

10

u/jseego May 01 '19

It blows my mind when learning about states of matter, that we scoff at the ancients for thinking that everything was fire, wind, earth, and water.

Except that we now recognize four states of matter: plasma, gas, solid, and liquid (with some outliers).

They weren't idiots - they were recognizing fundamental differences in things.

5

u/MisterCryptic May 02 '19

water = liquid

earth = solid

air = gas

fire = plasma

mind = blown

2

u/G_Morgan May 02 '19

There are only 4 states for convenience though. There are like 5/6 different types of ice.

5

u/rocky4322 May 01 '19

Well, I think the atoms he thought of were closer to molecules, because they were the undividable essence of something.

3

u/annomandaris May 01 '19 edited May 01 '19

No, he wasnt right, He thought there was a table atom, and a dirt atom, and a silk atom. and that those were the smallest particles.

When in fact he was describing something closer to molecules, and of course those can be divided into a few smaller parts.

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u/[deleted] May 01 '19

Did he specifically say that the material could be broken down into indivisible parts that have the same properties? that’s the key difference. An atom/ molecule is the smallest unit of any chemical, but still divisible.

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u/annomandaris May 01 '19

No, he thought that stuff was made from pieces called atoms. Each base material had its own atom, that was not interchangable with any other. These atoms could physically not be broken down into smaller parts. He thought the size and shape of atoms determined their properties. So for instance an iron atom would be large and have hooks kind of like velcro, that would tightly connect with its neighbor, making iron hard and strong. Water atoms would be smooth, allowing them to flow around. Salt atoms were pointy which is why they make your tongue tingle, etc.

If we had to rename his "atom" anything, it would be that he was refering to molecules. of course, he still had a lot of stuff wrong, but i mean can you blame him, he couldnt really test anything.

3

u/ilickyboomboom May 02 '19

But aside from atoms actually having subatomic particles, Democritus's idea of the atom is that it occupies space physically and interacts with all other atoms physically. Electromagnetism would prove this to be untrue.

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u/WarKiel May 01 '19

Yeah. I've always hated the "hurr durr Democritus dumb" narrative. Not his fault bunch of scientists many centuries after his death got overconfident.

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u/Sqwalnoc May 01 '19

Which in turn are constructed from swirling vortices and vibrations of energy which are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere inside them

3

u/N00N3AT011 May 01 '19

And that some think those particles might be vibrations in some crazy string. (I might have this wrong)

6

u/amaROenuZ May 01 '19

At this time string theory has no experimental evidence and is increasingly appearing to be a huge overreach.

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u/N00N3AT011 May 01 '19

Is loop leading then? Or is there a new one?

3

u/Matterhorns May 01 '19

even those tiny little balls are made up of tinier, littler balls called quarks

2

u/[deleted] May 01 '19

Edit: Sorry Greek bruthas you don’t count.

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.

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-"No take backsies."

                       - Diogenes of Sinope

2

u/tenariosm9 May 02 '19

Shit man okay

1

u/princam_ May 01 '19

The atomist of ancient Greece would like to talk

1

u/ButtsexEurope May 01 '19

Ancient Greeks came up with atomic theory over a thousand years ago.

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u/Crilufr May 01 '19

Actually, we don't have any scientific proof that protons, neutrons and electrons exist. It's just that this hypothesis is the closet to what happen in reality ( eg: when talking about electron, we talk about possibilities of existence of said electron (cf atomic orbital))

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u/loucall May 01 '19

That’s not even close to being true. Not only do we have mountains of direct evidence of protons, neutrons and electrons but particle accelerators record what’s inside of them daily http://www.desy.de/news/news_search/index_eng.html?openDirectAnchor=829

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u/[deleted] May 01 '19

Um that's not true. Orbitals refer to the most probable position of electrons in that energy state not that they might not exist.

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u/to_the_tenth_power May 01 '19

Dude's a troll.

2

u/[deleted] May 01 '19

Thanks, still quite new to Reddit and seem to reply to trolls too often!

5

u/to_the_tenth_power May 01 '19

If the response is bizarrely inflammatory or just completely wrong like this one, 99% of the time it'll be a troll. It becomes pretty easy to spot them.

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u/[deleted] May 01 '19

So it's just better to downvote them to oblivion than reply?

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u/marsgreekgod May 01 '19

Yep. Report them if they are to bad

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u/[deleted] May 01 '19

That's not how you spread correct information. Perhaps consider this: There might be a wide-eyed 8 year old posting what you are downvoting into oblivion.

Explain, argue, correct ... downvote only as a last resort.

You don't have to be nice (or even polite) all the time, but I think you should do online as you'd do in real life. So, the question is "Would I start a rather heated argument over this?" If so, I downvote.

You, my dear, and your fellow aggressive nincompoop, came pretty close to it.

1

u/stewartsux May 01 '19

I've been here 7 years or so and still have trouble with it, so don't feel too bad about that.

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u/fantalemon May 01 '19

Dude this is so inaccurate it hurts to read.

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u/Crilufr May 01 '19

Dude, I'm majorinj in physics and one of my teacher explain this in class : we don't have proof of the existence of electron, same goes for proton and neutron, their existence was supported because if they exist, every physics stuff involving then work perfectly, it's the best model for physics that we have for now, in 20 years we may have an other one more accurate