加州理工学院伟大的物理学家理查德·费曼有一个发现,要是你不得不把科学史压缩成一句重要的话,它就会是:“一切东西都是由原子构成的。”哪里都有原子,原子构成一切。你四下里望一眼,全是原子。不但墙壁、桌子和沙发这样的固体是原子,中间的空气也是原子。原子大量存在,多得简直无法想象。原子的基本工作形式是分子。一个分子就是两个或两个以上以相对稳定的形式一起工作的原子:一个氧原子加上两个氢原子,你就得到一个水分子。化学家往往以分子而不是以元素来考虑问题,就像作家往往以单词而不是以字母来考虑问题一样,因为他们计算 Richard Feynman, one of the great physicists at the California Institute of Technology, found that if you had to crush the history of science into one important thing, it would be: “Everything is made of atoms.” Where Have atoms, atoms make up everything. You look around, all the atoms. Not only walls, tables and softs are solid atoms, the middle air is also atoms. The presence of a large number of atoms, more than simply can not imagine. The basic working form of an atom is a molecule. A molecule is two or more atoms working together in a relatively stable form: an oxygen atom plus two hydrogen atoms, you get a water molecule. Chemists tend to think of problems in terms of elements rather than elements, just as writers tend to think of problems by words rather than letters because they calculate