between atoms?

[Tormod]

I'm not saying you're wrong. My point was that atoms are much more complex than electrons. Remember how IBM used single atoms to spell "IBM"? Now what was "between" those atoms which let us see the words spelt out?

Look here for an image of that:
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/images/stm10.jpg

It was made using an electron force microscope. Of course, the simple answer here is that we only see the letters because the material in between is filtered out but still it's an interesting question.

[sanctus]

Nanotechnology is just stupefying!

[TeleMad]

sanctus: In QM you can see the electron as a probability wave, thatmeans that at every permitted orbit you have a certain probability to have an electron localized if you mesure it. The further away you the closer the energy levels get.
Now if I remember right you can apply the same reasoning to atoms, that means the the concept between atoms doesn't really have a meaning, they just have a probability to be somewhere (maybe as well delt-dirac like) but if you do not mesure them thay are sort of everywhere,…

Tormod: In general the uncertainty principle applies to everything but it is only noticeable for subatomic particles.

Both of you have valid points, but Tormod's statement is the better.

The probability nature brought about by the uncertainty principle does apply even to atoms, but the effects are noticeable, basically, only for subatomic particles.

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is:

[delta]x * [delta]p >= h / (4 * [pi])

meaning that the uncertainty in a particle’s position times the uncertainty in the particle’s momentum is always greater than or equal to Planck’s constant divided by 4 times pi.

Since it is the uncertainty in position we are interested in, we solve for [delta]x by dividing both sides of the inequality by [delta]p. That gives:

[delta]x >= h / [(4 * [pi]) * [delta]p]

Momentum is equal to mass times velocity, p = m * v, so substitution gives us:

[delta]x >= h / [(4 * [pi]) * [delta]( m * v)]

Note that mass, m, is in the denominator on the right-hand side of the inequality. Thus, the uncertainty in position varies indirectly with mass: the greater the mass, the smaller the uncertainty in position. Therefore, although the uncertainty principle does apply to atoms as well as to electrons, the uncertainty in position is much smaller for an atom than for an electron because of the atom’s greater mass.