Electrons!

I’ve taken this post from a memoir I hope to finish soon of a canoe trip my daughter Angela and I took on the first 340 miles of the Mississippi River. It provides a good introduction to the material I want to talk about in the post to follow:

So much water!  I try to get my head around the notion that all this water is made up of molecules, two little hydrogen atoms clinging to a large oxygen atom like a miniature cartoon mouse head, all tumbling over each other.  Of course the molecules are not really solid, nor are the atoms, nor are the parts of the atoms.  It’s all about forces and big ideas. 

The molecules are so tiny and there are so many of them.  I wondered how many there were in this bit of river.  According to the Avogadro constant, there are 6.02 × 10²³ molecules in a mole.  The atomic mass of oxygen is 16, I remember that from high school chemistry, and the mass of hydrogen is a shade over one, so the atomic mass of water is almost exactly 16 + 2 = 18.  A mole of water is that number of grams, eighteen.  Since a gram of water has a volume of one cubic centimeter, thanks to the French, who set these units that way on purpose, a mole of water takes up about eighteen cubic centimeters.  This little section in the river was about 30 meters wide by a hundred meters long, and I guessed two meters deep.  That made 6000 cubic meters of water right there.  Since there are 100 centimeters in a meter, a cubic meter is 100 × 100 × 100 = 1,000,000, a million cubic centimeters.  Every eighteen of these is a mole, so there are a million divided by 18 moles in a cubic meter—about.   Ten over 18 reduces to 5/9, and I know the decimals for ninths just repeat the top, so that makes 55555.5… moles in each cubic meter.  We’ll call it 60,000, rounded to the nearest ten thousand, because I just wanted to know how many zeroes my number has. 

I did not share my thoughts with Angela.  It would annoy her, but this is just arithmetic and high school science, and I was curious.  So many people would run from a calculation like that, but it’s interesting.  It gives me perspective about life and the world and the universe when I think about that, and to never ponder such things is to lead a life I would have to call impoverished.

Okay, 60,000 moles in a cubic meter and 6000 cubic meters in this bit of river gives me 60,000 × 6000 = 360,000,000 moles in this section of river, or so.  Close enough.  In scientific notation we have 3.6 × 10⁸, and that makes multiplying by the Avogadro constant easier.  But I needed pencil and paper for this. 

Later I figured 3.6 × 10⁸ moles times 6.02 × 10²³ molecules per mole makes about 2.16 × 10³² molecules of water just right there, give or take an enormous number.  In standard notation, that’s 216,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.  I wonder how many there would be in the whole river.  You’d probably only have to tack on 5 or 6 zeroes but I’m not going to do it.

Electrons are more general; every substance has a specific pattern of electrons, so I turn my attention to them. Each oxygen atom has eight electrons, each hydrogen atom one. So every water molecule sports ten electrons, and in this patch of river there were 2.16 × 10³³.

How did all those electrons come to be?  And each one indistinguishable from the next!  John Wheeler’s suggestion that maybe all electrons are just one electron showing up all over has an odd plausibility when you think about it.

But it is astounding to think, as many electrons as there are in a drop of water, as many electrons as there are in a world, in the sun and all the planets, that for light years and light years across empty space are other clusters of identical electrons, that the universe is full of all of these identical particles.  What an absolutely astounding thought!  If all of those electrons are identical in all of their properties, including their mass and their charge, and all the protons and neutrons as well, what are we to make of that?  Could they have been different?  How do we know they are not different here from some other galaxy far across the other side of the universe?  The thought that electrons and protons have no such physical properties at all, but are dependent on some kind of pure idea, some kind of logical necessity springing from mathematical/digital properties makes it possible to imagine that our universe is necessarily as it is, and does not vary from one region to another.

Or what if there is something implausible and arbitrary about the universe in which we live?  I can buy quantum theory and the arbitrary nature of subatomic matter, but I have a lot more trouble conceiving of a variegated universe.  A variegated universe is even more inconceivable to me than the notion that every one of its approximately 10⁸⁰ electrons is identical to the next.

We talk about particles but an atom is not like a tiny solar system.  It has layers of fog that hold different discrete levels of energy that are necessarily digitized in some way.  An electron, like a photon, can be viewed either as a wave or as a particle, but there is something necessary about the amount of energy in an electron or in a photon.  An atom, being comprised of layers of fog or energy which repel the layers of fog of other atoms, is categorized just by those spheres or spheres of influence or layers of fog energy, all the way out to the full periodic table of the elements, and it is those layers of fog, those necessary digital layers or spheres of energy that for mathematical reasons determine the properties of the elements, the way they look, the way they behave, the way they like to link to each other, and these are determined by something necessarily mathematical and not just because they “want” eight electrons in their outer orbit, as we were taught in high school chemistry. 

That’s all they are, atoms; just patches of energy-fog that we like to imagine as systems of particles because we know peas and marbles and sand particles, and because that energy fog will not allow itself to be divided or quantified differently without a huge protest.

I find myself contemplating very seriously the notion that all reality, each sub-atomic particle has existence only as idea.  Perhaps at some level religion and science will find common ground, but far deeper and far stranger than any of us has ever imagined.

The Yellow Painter

A canoe is tethered to a dock with a yellow cord, called a painter. It is a light cord; it doesn’t take much to hold a canoe captive. A gentle breeze quickens the water, and the boat pulls gently at the painter, holding it taut.

Isn’t it like that for each of us? The ties that bind us to our moorings are mere strings and, for most of our lives, the tug to freedom is really quite gentle. And do we want that freedom? What happens to this canoe without the painter? What happens to me if I slip away? What happens to you? Do we truly want to be adrift, even though we tug?

The title of this work is a bit of a pun, and my intention was that the two definitions of the word “painter” each be meaningful. How does a painter hold two worlds together?

The composition of this image is strongly diagonal. Only the water has any semblance of horizontality. The boat is actively angled, but so is the dock—and so is the painter.

The side of the boat is a large mass of fairly bright red, and if we are sensitive to color, we are drawn to notice that the blue, out-of-date sticker (this was painted in 2013) is of a similar intensity. As is the painter. These three colors constitute the primary triad. Now we notice the muted colors of the world in which the canoe rests. Perhaps as we muse we match up the muted blues and greens, and then go for the grays. Next, if we are really into color, we compare the relationship of the triad of primary hues with the bundle of muted colors and the grays.

Or you might follow lines, or the masses. I leave further musings to you, though this image is a very poor substitute for the original.

This is why I believe that paintings belong on walls where people live and work, in houses and offices. I detest mausoleums—I mean museums—and attend them only out of necessity. Galleries make good orphanages for art—and you should know that the artist really does feel like she is abandoning her work—because a gallery provides a place where you can meet a painting that has a future for you, and then take it home and live with it.

A painting does worlds more than decorate your house, just as does your spouse. A painting offers one side of a conversation, and you keep up your end through reverie and contemplation. What you notice about a painting, if it works for you, was probably thought about and put there deliberately by the artist. You might be very surprised to know the care we artists take in the creation of a work of art. The intention is that your conversation with the painting will occupy you for hours and years—that is what makes a painting good, not so much that it “looks like a photograph” or is pretty or is any better than you could do.

There is no right set of things to notice about a painting, or to think about, or to muse upon. The only no-no, in my opinion, is to make up a back-story and impute it to the artist. If you had a teacher who led you to that practice, well, education is in a sorry state, isn’t it? The true back-story to this image is that my daughter Julia and I spent a week paddling the Everglades. Every evening we tied up to a wooden, roofed platform called a chickee. On the afternoon when this painting was conceived I sat and watched the canoe play at its tether, and watched the shapes and colors and began thinking about a new painting.