WEBVTT 00:00:00.180 --> 00:00:01.260 - [Narrator] You're walking on the street 00:00:01.260 --> 00:00:03.450 and suddenly you find a piece of gold, 00:00:03.450 --> 00:00:05.190 you pick it up and you get super curious. 00:00:05.190 --> 00:00:06.930 You have a lot of questions in your mind. 00:00:06.930 --> 00:00:08.490 One of the questions is, 00:00:08.490 --> 00:00:10.530 what happens if you were to break it? 00:00:10.530 --> 00:00:12.540 I mean, surely you can't break it with your own hands 00:00:12.540 --> 00:00:14.220 but hey, when has that stopped you 00:00:14.220 --> 00:00:16.140 from imagining things, right? 00:00:16.140 --> 00:00:17.670 So what happens if you break this? 00:00:17.670 --> 00:00:21.000 Well, you get two pieces of gold and then you wonder, 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:23.100 well, what if you break it even further? 00:00:23.100 --> 00:00:25.410 You get even more smaller pieces. 00:00:25.410 --> 00:00:27.200 And what if you break it even further? 00:00:27.200 --> 00:00:29.430 We get even more smaller pieces. 00:00:29.430 --> 00:00:33.720 And now you start wondering, "Hey, can I keep doing that?" 00:00:33.720 --> 00:00:37.323 Can I keep breaking this piece of gold forever? 00:00:38.220 --> 00:00:40.380 That's what we we're gonna talk about in this video. 00:00:40.380 --> 00:00:41.430 This was a question 00:00:41.430 --> 00:00:45.300 that many ancient philosophers from India, Greece, Roman, 00:00:45.300 --> 00:00:47.610 probably many more, pondered upon. 00:00:47.610 --> 00:00:50.340 They wondered, if you take any element, 00:00:50.340 --> 00:00:51.690 remember what elements are? 00:00:51.690 --> 00:00:55.365 These are roughly about 100 building blocks 00:00:55.365 --> 00:00:58.830 that make up all the matter in the universe 00:00:58.830 --> 00:01:00.480 gold is an example of them. 00:01:00.480 --> 00:01:03.060 So they wondered, if you take any element, 00:01:03.060 --> 00:01:07.140 could you keep breaking them down forever? 00:01:07.140 --> 00:01:12.140 And a lot of them thought, that maybe the answer is no. 00:01:12.360 --> 00:01:14.040 Maybe you can't keep breaking it forever. 00:01:14.040 --> 00:01:16.860 Maybe eventually, you will get 00:01:16.860 --> 00:01:21.120 one last smallest piece of that element, 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:24.510 a smallest piece of gold, for example, 00:01:24.510 --> 00:01:27.210 which you cannot break any further. 00:01:27.210 --> 00:01:29.340 A lot of people believed in this idea, 00:01:29.340 --> 00:01:34.340 and the Greeks actually named this smallest piece, the atom. 00:01:35.910 --> 00:01:39.000 The word atom literally means uncuttable 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:42.270 because they believe that you cannot break this even more. 00:01:42.270 --> 00:01:43.830 Now, for a long time, 00:01:43.830 --> 00:01:45.930 many people didn't believe in this idea. 00:01:45.930 --> 00:01:48.690 So for centuries, the idea of atom was suppressed 00:01:48.690 --> 00:01:53.690 until it was revived back by scientists like John Dalton. 00:01:53.790 --> 00:01:58.170 And today we have plenty of evidence that they do exist. 00:01:58.170 --> 00:02:01.620 So, what exactly are atoms? 00:02:01.620 --> 00:02:04.440 Well, think of atoms as the smallest piece of an element 00:02:04.440 --> 00:02:07.080 that has all the properties of that element. 00:02:07.080 --> 00:02:10.560 It is literally the building block of the element itself. 00:02:10.560 --> 00:02:13.110 For example, what's a gold atom? 00:02:13.110 --> 00:02:15.990 Gold atoms are the smallest pieces of gold, 00:02:15.990 --> 00:02:18.120 which has all the properties of gold. 00:02:18.120 --> 00:02:20.100 They're the building blocks of gold. 00:02:20.100 --> 00:02:21.720 What's a carbon atom? 00:02:21.720 --> 00:02:24.690 Well, they are the smallest pieces of carbon 00:02:24.690 --> 00:02:26.070 They're the building blocks of carbon. 00:02:26.070 --> 00:02:27.990 They have all the properties of carbon. 00:02:27.990 --> 00:02:31.170 And just to give you another example, what's mercury atom? 00:02:31.170 --> 00:02:33.720 They're the smallest pieces of mercury. 00:02:33.720 --> 00:02:36.330 They have all the properties of the element mercury 00:02:36.330 --> 00:02:38.250 and so on and so forth. 00:02:38.250 --> 00:02:39.870 Now, one question you could be having is, 00:02:39.870 --> 00:02:42.030 do atoms look like tiny balls? 00:02:42.030 --> 00:02:45.240 And the answer is no, it's just a representation. 00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:48.720 In reality, atoms are so incredibly tiny, 00:02:48.720 --> 00:02:51.360 we can't even see them with microscopes. 00:02:51.360 --> 00:02:53.100 So how tiny are they you ask? 00:02:53.100 --> 00:02:56.490 Well, their size is incredibly hard to comprehend. 00:02:56.490 --> 00:03:00.390 So here's a way to think about it, how many gold atoms 00:03:00.390 --> 00:03:05.250 do you think you will find in a typical gold ring? 00:03:05.250 --> 00:03:09.990 Well, it's not millions, not billions, it's sextillions 00:03:09.990 --> 00:03:14.220 that's one followed by 21 zeros, 00:03:14.220 --> 00:03:18.180 that many atoms you'll probably find in a gold ring. 00:03:18.180 --> 00:03:19.710 And just to get a sense of this number 00:03:19.710 --> 00:03:22.770 scientists estimate that that is roughly about 00:03:22.770 --> 00:03:27.663 the total number of stars in the observable universe. 00:03:28.740 --> 00:03:33.740 Let that sink in. That's how small atoms are. 00:03:35.460 --> 00:03:38.430 So long story short, almost all the matter in the universe, 00:03:38.430 --> 00:03:40.410 from the microbes to dogs and cats, 00:03:40.410 --> 00:03:42.690 to mountains to planets and stars, 00:03:42.690 --> 00:03:45.090 and almost everything that you see in this universe, 00:03:45.090 --> 00:03:47.460 they're all fundamentally made of elements. 00:03:47.460 --> 00:03:48.720 These are the building blocks 00:03:48.720 --> 00:03:50.160 of all the matter in the universe. 00:03:50.160 --> 00:03:51.570 We have about 100 of them. 00:03:51.570 --> 00:03:53.640 But what are elements fundamentally made of? 00:03:53.640 --> 00:03:56.490 Elements like gold or any other element for that matter 00:03:56.490 --> 00:03:59.340 they are fundamentally made of atoms. 00:03:59.340 --> 00:04:01.200 They are the smallest pieces of the elements, 00:04:01.200 --> 00:04:02.580 the building blocks of the elements 00:04:02.580 --> 00:04:06.093 that contain all the properties of that element.