Re: What kind of sets are there?

Tina Hall <Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Jonathan L Cunningham <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina Hall <Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jonathan L Cunningham <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Ok. Tina mentioned in her original post using numbers, somehow, as a
possibility. So here's my suggestion: the elements.

Not the four elements, earth, air, fire, water, but the 90 naturally
occurring elements. (And I don't mean 92 -- elements 43 and 61 don't
occur naturally.)

Great idea.

Unfortunately I don't understand them. :/

Don't understand what? Do you know that water (in our real world) is
a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, called H2O ?

Yes. The two means two parts of O. Hydrogen is 'waterstuff' and
oxygen is 'sourstuff', the latter is what we need to breathe, IIRC

The other way around: two hydrogens and one oxygen.

I vaguely remember that arsenic is #31 in the periodic table. But
that's really it. Oh, and lead was called plumbum or something?
(Because of the noise it makes when landing after a fall?)

I think you'd like the periodic table. It's nice and regular.

For example, copper, silver and gold are all good conductors (of
electricity) and they all lie in the same column. (Silver is the
best, but wires are made of copper because it is almost as good
and a lot cheaper.)

Sodium and potassium are similar (you get both in "low sodium"
table salt) and potassium is just below sodium in the table.

Fluorine, chlorine, bromine and iodine are similar, and are in a
column at the other end (from sodium) of the table. They are similar,
but get gradually less corrosive and volatile as you go from
fluorine to iodine.

The elements at the top of the table (the rows are called "periods")
are more common than the elements lower down. And so on.

You could use either the element number or the atomic weight
number:

Atomic weight sounds fascinating. (I love the subject, I just don't
know anything about it.)

Atoms are made out of three kinds of thing. Most of the weight comes
from two of them, which are heavier than the third, and which weigh
about the same. The "atomic weight" is, roughly, how many of these
heavy things there are. (The scientific word is "baryon" which just
means "heavy thing". The third kind of thing is called a "lepton" which
just means "light thing".)

:)

Protons and neutrons are those with the weight?

Yes.

And protons and neutrons are called nucleons because they stick
together in the nucleus of an atom.

The electrons are outside: because they are lighter, they need more
room, so they won't fit in the nucleus. This is one of the strange
things about QM. But you can think of them as zipping around faster
(because they are lighter) so they need more room (like a little kid
running around in a crowd of adults).

for example, there are no stable isotopes with 5 or 8 nucleons in
them.

The reason would probably be too complicated, I guess.

No reason at all, AFAIK. It just is. Does everything have a reason?

It needs one. :)

I don't know if this counts as a reason, but two protons and two
neutrons stick together so tidily that if you try to put five (protons
or neutrons) together, one falls off. And if you try to put eight
together, it falls apart into two fours.

Does that count as an explanation?

It doesn't, quite, for me because it doesn't explain why two of each
is better than three of one, two of the other.

And if you ask "two protons and two neutrons, what about one proton
and three neutrons?" the answer is that if you try that, one of the
neutrons will turn into a proton, so that you are back to two of
each. Protons and neutrons are *very* similar, like opposite sides
of the same coin. Turning a proton into a neutron, or the other way
around, is like turning a coin over.

Jonathan

--
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.

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