National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute)
Associate Professor Andrey OLCHAK, DSc
EdEx Course “How Our World Is Designed?”
Supporting material
Introduction. Structure of Matter at Different Scales
In the Mikolajus Ciurlionis Art Museum in the city of Kaunas in Lituania one may see a famous
picture from this well known east European artist – Triptych REX (Power, 1909). It consists of
three pictures, looking very differently from the first sight and showing quite different objects:
the boat, near the high embankment, the pediment of a temple and, finally, a tremendous
monument erected on a pedestal amidst a sea. But if you look more attentively one may notice,
that the first (far left) part of the picture presents actually a small fragment of the middle part
(see the red square, added by the author of this lecture), but in enlarged scale. The same with the
middle part – it is an enlarged fragment of the last part of the triptych (look at the yellow square,
added by the author of this lecture).
Mikalojus Ciurlionis, Triptych REX (1904–1905)
This triptych by Michael Ciurlionis (1875–1911) may serve as a wonderful illustration of the fact
well known to contemporary Physics: our World, the complete nature surrounding us, may look
very different at different scales and the Laws governing nature at different scales may be also
quite different from each other. The micro-world of atoms and molecules is very different from
the world of macroscopic objects, which are comparable in scale to human beings and which we
can perceive with our senses. And the world of Mega-Objects, like stars and galaxies look very
different from both micro- and macro- worlds. Though some basic laws governing the nature at
any scale, are practically the same. And the science which studies those most general laws of
nature is physics.
Let us look at the next picture showing the objects inhabiting and persisting in our World at
different scales. The mankind has invented plenty of different sciences studying those objects.
Mostly those sciences are concentrated on certain types of objects at certain more or less widely
spread scale. Chemistry is busy with atoms and molecules, biology – with mostly macroscopic
living beings, etc. The only field of knowledge which pretends to cover practically all the scale
ranges from elementary particles up to complete universe taken as a whole is physics.
The principle difference of physics from all other fields of knowledge usually called sciences lies
in the fact that it is based not only on the collection and analysis of the observational and
experimental data, but also on some fundamental general statements related to the most general
properties of our space, time and matter, and on mathematics allowing logical derivation from
those general statements certain more particular quantitative knowledge about motion and
properties of matter at different scales, which can be independently compared to experimental
and observational data.
In this course of lectures we will present a general overview of the structure of matter in our
universe at all possible scales from the point of view of contemporary physics.
The course will consist of two parts. In the first one we will trace the evolution of physical
knowledge about the deep structure of matter from macroscopic scale down to atoms and
elementary particle. In the second part we will undertake a journey in opposite direction and
discuss the structure of our universe at the Mega-scale.
The author clearly understands that within the frameworks of this short course due to evident
limitations of the proposed format it is impossible to cover the whole range of modern physics.
The main purpose of the course is just to give a general overview ant to awake your interest
towards the discussed issues. The author hopes, that those whose interest will be awoken will
manage to find more information from other sources (corresponding references you may find in
this supporting material).