EXPERIMENT 1: An Oil-Drop Model of a Splitting Atom

    Many scientists have suggested that a splitting atom behaves somewhat like a drop of liquid when it breaks up into  droplets.  This  experiment  demonstrates  the  point.

    Fill the water glass about half full with rubbing alcohol, then add enough water to fill the glass two-thirds full.

Stir  the  alcohol-water  mixture  with  the  teaspoon.

    Next, wipe the teaspoon dry and fill it with cooking oil.

    Now comes the tricky part: Carefully bring the spoon close to the surface of the alcohol-water mixture in the glass, then gently tip the spoon over. If you’ve done the job right, a single blob of oil will slide into the glass.

    If the blob of oil is floating on the surface, carefully add a bit more alcohol to the mixture (use your teaspoon): if the blob has sunk to the bottom of the glass, spoon in some more water. The idea is to change the blob of oil into an oil drop that hovers somewhere in the middle of the glass, as shown in the drawing.

    Note how perfectly spherical the drop is. The forces that hold the oil drop together are analogous to the forces that hold an atom together.

    Now take the butter knife and carefully prod the drop apart. At first, the drop will bulge.

Then, it will tear apart into two perfectly round oil drops. The oil-drop “atom” will have split into two smaller “atoms.” Note that the drop wouldn’t split until it was critically deformed by the knife. Atoms behave in much the same way: They resist splitting  until  some  action  critically  deforms  them.