system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
My hand is made up of tiny atoms. So is this plank of wood. Is it theoretically possible for the atoms in my hand and the atoms in the wood to align in such a way that I could put my hand through the wood?
gpt
No. While it's generally true that there's quite a bit of empty space, there's a considerable amount of energy. Specifically, we know that two particles cannot occupy the same quantum state - they can't be in the same place with the sames spin (this is called the Pauli exclusion principle). So, when two electron orbitals press up against each other there's a force that prevents them from getting tangled up with each other. On the macro level, it produces the phenomenon you understand as matter being solid and coherent. In a solid, the covalent bonds between atoms are forming a network of atoms without sufficient space for other networks of atoms to pass through (because of exclusion). You could break all the bonds in both, making them gasses, and then they could mix.