if you want to get right down to it, we're all just a collection of atoms , electrons... blah, blah, blah... nothing is really solid, so we don't touch anything
but so what? i can feel the difference between wood and metal by placing my hand on it, i can taste the difference between chocolate and chicken... just because the molecules don't actually slam into each other doesn't change anything
I agree on that. Even as we are not able to place our molecules right beside the ones of the object we touch, there remains some connection though the varied 'behaviour' of different materials as we receive different data from different materials. And that is only when viewing stable solid mass. You can definitely touch or more be touched by forms of energy. Ever been zapped by 220 volts? I have, and that felt pretty connected! Not to mention being exposed to laser or radiation, in those cases the energy directly affects your matter, with no electrons stepping up to get in between.
Even electric discharges, lasers, and many types of radiation does only affect our electronic structure. Even burning something does only affect that thing electronically.
Almost everything that we see happen because it is a electronic thing, for example, two objects cannot pass through each other only because electric repulsion between the protons of the two objects prevent it, it does not have any relation with matter(like if the mass of the objects prevented the objects to pass through each other), it is just electricity, or precisely electric repulsion.
Originally posted by Scoobless
if you want to get right down to it, we're all just a collection of atoms , electrons... blah, blah, blah... nothing is really solid, so we don't touch anythingbut so what? i can feel the difference between wood and metal by placing my hand on it, i can taste the difference between chocolate and chicken... just because the molecules don't actually slam into each other doesn't change anything
All of that is made out of energy aswell, which doesn't exist in a physical state !
Originally posted by Soth
Quntam physics are nothing compared to my little buddy, Common Sense. Of course we touch things. I recently touched myself. . . and I'm pretty sure it was real
On an atomic level, one never really touches anything. Earlier, when you touched yourself, you were not feeling yourself, but the electrical force between charges.
Originally posted by Adam_PoE
Nothing touches on an atomic level, not even atoms.
What I meant was, the atoms that make up your person exist. They are part of you. In existence, they are 'touching' themselves because the smallest part of an atom exists, and if you divide it, it is touching itself. Therefore, all parts of you are touching yourself.
Originally posted by crazylozer
What I meant was, the atoms that make up your person exist. They are part of you. In existence, they are 'touching' themselves because the smallest part of an atom exists, and if you divide it, it is touching itself. Therefore, all parts of you are touching yourself.
Umm... no.
Re: Do you ever really touch anything?
Originally posted by Revernd Maynard
Because there are electrons in your skin and on things that you touch, and they create a charge, so do you ever really touch anything?
Well let's see, take a gun and point it to your head. If things never really touch, than you should live, right?
Mynard?...MYNARD?!?!?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Just kidding but to talk of the subject, I think that in my opinion I must agree. My supporting theory is that instead of the electrons causing charges, they cause one another to change. For example, the bullet coursing through your head would never "touch" anything. But in fact cause the cells to move away, and the tissue to seperate away from the bullet. Like identical poles of a magnet.
Originally posted by tall_paul
agreed, there are so many problems with even saying that something is touching itself even if it is just one particle
Sorry, I don't think I was completely coherent before, let me try again.
Touch is the contact between one thing and another. But when dealing with the technicalities of science, the definition of thing is that if there is space space between them, it is then two things. But that's not how people deals with objects. If it were, everthing would be a variation of the same protons, neutrons, quarks etc. and there would be no point in using different words to describe them. However, if you classify an atom as one thing, that being the sum of its parts, them how can you seperate the magnetic fields and whatnot from that item. It is a property of the object, and if that property exists, it is a thing, which when coming into contact with another field, which is a property of another object, then that should be touch. On that point, if it is insisted that each part of the atom is seperate, and each atom of a molecule is seperate, etc. etc., then there is no 'you'. 'You' are an entity which is built up of the sum of your parts, which means that if you choose to seperate the make-up into every divisible thing possible, 'you' do not exist in the sense that 'you' are one thing.