Atomic Interactions Quotes

Atoms are very special: they like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so on. It is the job of physics to analyze why each one wants what it wants.

Chemistry is the melodies you can play on vibrating strings.

Science as an intellectual exercise enriches our culture, and is in itself ennobling. ... Though to the layman, the world revealed by the chemist may seem more commonplace, it is not so to him. Each new insight into how the atoms in their interactions express themselves in structure and transformations, not only of inanimate matter, but particularly also of living matter, provides a thrill.

The main thread of my work is structure property relations and materials. If you have certain atoms, why do they attract each other? Why do they make compounds? Why do they do what they do?

During the 20th century, we came to understand that the essence of all substances - their colour, texture, hardness and so forth - is set by their structure, on scales far smaller even than a microscope can see. Everything on Earth is made of atoms, which are, especially in living things, combined together in intricate molecular assemblages.

Chemists have always been in the business of taking atoms and putting them together with other atoms with precisely defined connections.

Even in the world of molecules the civilising influence of modest restraints is a cause for rejoicing.

In order to figure out how to make atoms compute, you have to learn how to speak their language and to understand how they process information under normal circumstances.