Atoms Quote by Erwin Schrodinger
“Why are atoms so small? ... Many examples have been devised to bring this fact home to an audience, none of them more impressive than the one used by Lord Kelvin: Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water, then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter thoroughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if you then took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules.”
About This Quote
Source Book: “What Is Life?” (1944)
Even tiny molecules disperse uniformly when mixed, illustrating how individual parts become indistinguishable in a vast system.
In simple terms: Molecules spread out evenly in large volumes.
Key Takeaway
Understand scale and dilution.
Themes
science
scale
probability
Mood
analytical
curious
Type
scientific
educational
When to use this quote
- laboratory experiments
- environmental monitoring
- pharmaceutical dosing
Key Concepts
physics
statistics
Questions to Reflect On
- How does scale affect perception of impact?
- What analogies help grasp large‑scale mixing?
A Different Perspective
Real‑world systems often have non‑uniform distribution due to currents or barriers.
![“I am no friend of probability theory, I have hated it from the first moment when our dear friend Max Born gave it birth. For it could be seen how easy and simple it made everything, in principle, everything ironed and the true problems concealed. Everybody must jump on the bandwagon [Ausweg]. And…” quote by Erwin Schrödinger](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/734/erwin-schrodinger-8450_born_i-am-no-friend-of-probability-theory-i-h_434486.jpg)
![“[Decoding the human genome sequence] is the most significant undertaking that we have mounted so far in an organized way in all of science. I believe that reading our blueprints, cataloguing our own instruction book, will be judged by history as more significant than even splitting the atom or…” quote by Francis Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/5c6/francis-collins-5281_atoms_decoding-the-human-genome-sequence-is-th_15604.jpg)
