Happy Birthday to a Great Chemist (Or Should I Say Physicist?)
It’s the birthday of Ernest Rutherford, best known for presenting us with the first model of the atom that included electrons spinning around a tiny but relatively high-mass nucleus of the opposite charge. He won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1908, which irritated him, in that he deemed that chemistry had less value than physics. He said, “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.”
That’s clever; I smile whenever I run across this, and I totally get it. To define the difference between the two branches of science of the physical universe:
Chemistry: the study of how different substances interact with one another to form the matter we see around us.
Physics: Literally everything else. Mechanics, electricity/magnetism, astronomy, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, optics, acoustics, geophysics, the science of the very small (quantum mechanics, particle physics, understanding the ultimate building blocks of the universe), the science of the very large (relativity, cosmology, astrophysics).
I’m afraid he had a point there.
You can cut it up in all sorts of ways but essentially you have matter and energy. And we have conversion equations that allow us to see one in terms of the other. Chemistry like physics has many branches.
One of the most interesting as we move forward might be the area of meta-materials. The idea of structure can create strength (like folded paper or a triangle) is interesting. Meta materials have specific structures on the atomic level that allow us to bend energy. http://www.metamaterialscenter.com/what-are-metamaterials/ They have already given us invisibility cloaks, and enabled us to bend sound around objects. Now that we have detected gravity waves, I am almost expecting soon to hear about gravity being bent around man made objects. If we could bend gravity we could also then focus it.