Excerpt
Ken and his sister, Louise, were encouraged to stay and listen during
these lively sessions, but not to interrupt with frivolous chat. As it meant the
usual bedtime curfew was suspended, Ken often occupied himself on the
periphery of the group, absorbing what he could as he played quietly.
One special evening, during a pause in the conversation, a big man
with a Danish accent and a warm smile asked the boy if he understood what
they were talking about. Ken wasn’t clear as to the meaning, but replied that
it sounded as if they were trying hard to read God’s mind.
The man looked thoughtful. “You’re right, that is what we are trying to
do. Does it make any sense to you?”
“Not really, but it sounds beautiful,” Ken replied with genuine
interest. “Does it make sense to you?”
The visitor laughed. He seemed pleased with the youngster’s disarming
manner, and asked if Ken knew what an atom was. He did not, so an
explanation was in order.
“Everything is made of atoms—this table, you, the crockery on the
table—all are made up of atoms.”
This was difficult to grasp. Clearly Ken knew he was not the same
shape or composition as the dishes on the table. How could they be made of
the same stuff, yet be so different?
In an attempt to explain, the man said, “Tiny variations change
everything.” He searched for terms the boy would understand.
“Imagine you have a tennis ball. That’s the centre of the atom and we call
it the nucleus. Now, spinning around the nucleus are a whole assembly of
little things, and as the configuration of these spinning things changes, the
form of the atom changes—from being a table to being a dish, for example.
All of these bits and pieces are very, very, very tiny. If they were the actual
size of the tennis ball, then the distance to the nearest spinning object would
be equivalent to a quarter of a mile.”
Ken could readily understand the concept of small and very small, but
that gave rise to another question. “What’s between the nucleus and the
spinning things?”
The big man shook his head. “Nothing,” he replied.
