Is it true that you can never really touch something due to atoms?
by 
tutushaker
ANSWERS: 6
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I thought atoms were the "something."
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You can, in the physical reality, touch things. Our experience clearly shows that we can. Rationally, however, we can never truly touch something, however limits in calculus show that we can intend to touch something..
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It depends how you define it. If you mean actual physical contact, then no, you will never touch anything, there will always be a small barrier between your hand and the object you are trying to touch, due to the strong electrostatic repulsion experienced by say the electrons in your hand atoms against the electrons in the object atoms. If you mean any degree of interaction, then yes, you are touching it!
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This might be a dumb question.. but lets you are bouncing a basketball. When the ball "touches" the ground the electron shield prevents the two objects from actually touching. Would it be possible to deactivate the electron shield? What would happen if the adams could actually touch?
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If you could deactivate the electron shield, than most likely you'd find the protons repelling one another and a similar situation would occur where the basketball would still bounce upwards. Now what's more interesting is if you could disable the proton shield affect as well. If this were the case, the two surfaces would probably pass right through one another since the atom is mostly comprised of empty space.
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...like you just existing of atoms and hence "you" as such don't really exist?
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