Beyondnanon on TV, Rai Scuola - Memex The atom Matter is it made of atoms. The atom is the smallest portion of matter that retains all the characteristics of a single element. Every atom is composed of a core and one or more electrons arranged on circular orbits. The core that is made from high-density positively charged particles, protons, and particles with charge neutral calls precisely neutrons. The atom is not a discovery of modern science. The first to speak of atoms were the pre-Socratic philosophers ... See the atoms and the matter The ability to magnify objects, atoms and matter, to grasp the details of their intimate structure is a need felt since the birth of modern science. In fact this need was at first directed to observations of distant objects, like the heavenly bodies, which appear small in their own right away. The physicists "see" by using various forms of radiation produced by, or interacting with, the bodies to be observed. In the case of the telescope ... Technologies to closely observe the atom and matter are many. The spectroscopy (atoms and molecules in motion), and the synchrotron light and pulsed electromagnetic radiation such as that produced in a free electron laser, allow to observe transient phenomena that take place inside of the molecules. These are phenomena which occur in very small time intervals, of the order of a millionth of a billionth of a second (femtosecond). With these ... Our ability to "look closely" the atoms, molecules, matter, gives us leisure to study their structures and be able to manipulate matter at the atomic scale; this in order to achieve artificial forms of aggregation of the matter itself, not existing in nature, thus generating structures with unique properties, fundamental for the realization, for example, of devices which today cohabit daily with each of us, and then of miniaturized devices and apparatuses ...
The technology to spy on the matter Design the matter