第九章 威力巨大的原子
While Einstein and Hubble were productively unraveling the large-scale structure of the cosmos, others were struggling to understand something closer to hand but in its way just as remote: the tiny and ever-mysterious atom. The great Caltech physicist Richard Feynman once observed that if you had to reduce scientific history to one important statement it would be “All things are made of atoms.” They are everywhere and they constitute every thing. Look around you. It is all atoms. Not just the solid things like walls and tables and sofas, but the air in between. And they are there in numbers that you really cannot conceive.
當愛因斯坦和哈勃在弄清宇宙的大尺度結構方面成果累累的時候，另一些人在努力搞懂近在手邊的而從他們的角度來看又是非常遙遠的東西：微小而又永遠神秘的原子。加州理工學院偉大的物理學家理查德·費曼有一次發現，要是你不得不把科學史壓縮成一句重要的話，它就會是：“一切東西都是由原子構成的?！蹦睦锒加性?，原子構成一切。你四下里望一眼，全是原子。不但墻壁、桌子等等這樣的固體是原子，中間的空氣也是原子。原子大量存在，多得簡直無法想像。
The basic working arrangement of atoms is the molecule (from the Latin for “little mass”). A molecule is simply two or more atoms working together in a more or less stable arrangement: add two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen and you have a molecule of water. Chemists tend to think in terms of molecules rather than elements in much the way that writers tend to think in terms of words and not letters, so it is molecules they count, and these are numerous to say the least. At sea level, at a temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit, one cubic centimeter of air (that is, a space about the size of a sugar cube) will contain 45 billion billion molecules. And they are in every single cubic centimeter you see around you. Think how many cubic centimeters there are in the world outside your window—how many sugar cubes it would take to fill that view. Then think how many it would take to build a universe. Atoms, in short, are very abundant.
原子的基本工作形式是分子（源自拉丁文，意思是“小團物質”）。一個分子就是兩個或兩個以上以相對穩定的形式一起工作的原子：一個氧原子加上兩個氫原子，你就得到一個水分子?；瘜W家往往以分子而不是以元素來考慮問題，就像作家往往以單詞而不是以字母來考慮問題一樣，因此他們計算的是分子。分子的數量起碼可以說是很多的。在海平面的高度、零攝氏度溫度的情況下，一立方厘米空氣（大約相當于一塊方糖所占的空間）所含的分子多達4500億億個。而你周圍的每一立方厘米空間都有這么多分子。想一想，你窗外的世界有多少個立方厘米——要用多少塊方糖才能填滿你的視野。然后再想一想，要多少個這樣的空間才能構成宇宙。總而言之，原子是很多的。
來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/Article/201612/484991.shtml
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