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You probably already know everything is made up of little tiny things called atoms
你也許已經知道所有的東西都是由微小的原子組成。
or even that each atom is made up of even smaller particles called protons, neutrons and electrons.
你可能還知道每一個原子是由更小的叫做質子，中子和電子的微粒組成
And you've probably heard that atoms are small.
也許你聽說過原子很小。
But I bet you haven't ever thought about how small atoms really are.
但我打賭，你從未想過它究竟有多小。
Well, the answer is that they are really, really small.
答案是，它們非常非常非常小。
So you ask, just how small are atoms?
你提出問題了，到底原子有多小呢?
To understand this, let's ask this question: How many atoms are in a grapefruit?
為了去理解它，讓我們先提出一個問題：一個柚子包含多少原子？
Well, let's assume that the grapefruit is made up of only nitrogen atoms,
首先我們假設柚子完全由氮原子構成，
which isn't at all true, but there are nitrogen atoms in a grapefruit.
雖然不準確，但柚子中確實有氮原子。
To help you visualize this, let's blow up each of the atoms to the size of a blueberry.
為了便于觀察，我們把原子放大到一個藍莓大小。
And then how big would the grapefruit have to be?
那總體柚子又會是多大呢？
It would have to be the same size of -- well, actually, the Earth.
它會跟地球的個頭差不多。
That's crazy! You mean to say that if I filled the Earth with blueberries,
天啊！難道地球裝滿藍莓的數量
I would have the same number of nitrogen atoms as a grapefruit?
會和柚子中的氮原子一樣多？
That's right! So how big is the atom?
的確如此！那么原子究竟有多小？
Well, it's really, really small! And you know what? It gets even more crazy.
它真的非常非常小，小到超出了你的想象。
Let's now look inside of each atom -- and thus the blueberry, right? What do you see there?
現在讓我們看看原子內部，也就是藍莓。你看到了什么？
In the center of the atom is something called the nucleus,
你會發現原子有一個核心，叫原子核。
which contains protons and neutrons, and on the outside, you'd see electrons. So how big is the nucleus?
其中包含著質子和中子，外圍的是電子。那么原子核有多大？
If atoms are like blueberries in the Earth, how big would the nucleus be?
如果原子是地球中的藍莓，那么原子核又有多大呢？
You might remember the old pictures of the atom from science class,
你可能在物理書上看過原子的描繪，
where you saw this tiny dot on the page with an arrow pointing to the nucleus.
原子核是箭頭所指的小點。
Well, those pictures, they're not drawn to scale, so they're kind of wrong.
這些圖不是按比例畫的，所以并不準確。
So how big is the nucleus?
那么真實的原子核多大呢？
