Bryson Reading Chapter 2 & 3

Quote:
"Such are the distances, in fact that it isn't possible, in any practical
terms, to draw the solar system to scale. Even if you added lots of fold-out
pages to your textbooks or used a really long sheet of poster paper, you
wouldn't come close. On a diagram of the solar system to scale, with Earth
reduced to about the diameter of a pea, Jupiter would be over a thousand
feet away and Pluto would be a mile and a half distant (and about the size
of a bacterium, so you wouldn1t be able to see it anyway)."

I found this portion of the reading extremely interesting. People tend to make those perfectly scale maps of our solar system that show everything in a nice proportionate way. I always had a hunch that things in space werent this linear and proportionate. I had no idea that everything would still be so far apart. Pluto being the size of a bactirum is pretty small! I remember in chemistry class, our teacher did a demonstration where she made a scale diagram as to where everything in an atom is. I think teachers should do the same with the solar system! Why do we put the solar system in such simple terms? Why dont teachers explain the vast amounts of space and the enourmous size of planets? I think that this weeks reading helped me learn that I still know so little about the vast world out there and that not everything is how it always seems. After reading this text I am more curious about space and our solar system.

Bryson Reading

Pg. 2- "The bad news is that atoms are fickle and their time of devotion is fleeting-fleeting indeed. Even a long human life adds up to only about 650,000 hours. And when that modest milestone flashes past, or at some other point thereabouts, for reasons unknown your atoms will shut you down, silently dissemble, and god off to be other things. And thats it for you."

This passage struck me because Bryson broke life and death down so such simple terms. It truly makes our time seem short. 650,000 hours doesnt seem like a long time at all, and when we die our atoms just move on. This passage made me think a lot about the role of atoms in our lives. How can atoms make up so many different things? They even make up so many different body parts due to the different kind of cells. When you die and begin disintegrating does everything break back down into atoms? And then what happens? How do they know where to go? How do they even get there? This reading left me with many questions that are aspects of our human makeup I had never thought about.

Another thing that struck me is that atoms arent alive. I knew that, but it caused me to think about our existence. We are made from cells, cells are alive; cells are made from molecules I believe, and molecules are made from atoms, which arent alive. Where does life begin? How can we be made up of something that's never alive?

Essentially, this article left me mind boggled, especially about the role of atoms in our existence. There were several new ideas and thoughts that caused me to think a lot about our world, the big bang and what it is made up of.