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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
By 1926, when quantum mechanics finally emerged as a coherent theory, the evidence for an atomic structure in Nature was overwhelming. Today, scanning microscopes allow us to “see” chemical atoms one-by-one. They are real. Since quantum theory makes no reference at all to particles, why then do we have all these particulate atoms, ions, and nuclei? How do we account for the success of those stick-and-ball models of molecules, or crystals, or Crick and Watson’s double-helixed DNA? The answer is that atomic nuclei are made of stuff that interacts with a force law that gives its assemblages an intrinsic tiny size. The parts are sizeless quantum entities, but the things they make can behave – most of the time – like microscopic particles. The force law and its properties are consequences of the fundamental symmetries of the Standard Model which I will now endeavor to describe.
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