(This was back in the early sixties, and I fully realize that actual physicists had a completely different concept of the situation.)
You had your protons, you had your neutrons, and you had your electrons. Your physics teacher never indicated that there was anything below that level. All atoms were made up of different numbers of those three things. And smart guys like me figured out that a neutron was really just a combined proton and electron. (We never brought it up because, well, wait until it was on a test.)
Atomic bombs? Simple. Too many protons in a nucleus made an atom unstable. Just tap that unstable atom with something and boom! Make enough of those unstable atoms go boom and BIG BOOM!
When I was a kid, back in the early 1860s, atoms were singular and indivisible now a days you have all these sub atomic particles…when did physics go so wrong?
When I was in high school (1950s), I read Scientific American magazine and thought I actually understood quite a bit of it. Now I can’t understand the manual that comes with my landline phone.
[QUOTE=Phoebe Buffay]
Wasn’t there a time when the brightest minds in the world believed that the world was flat? And, up until like what, 50 years ago, you all thought the atom was the smallest thing, until you split it open, and this like, whole mess of crap came out.
[/Quote]
Meh. I have a degree in physics and I think that is an easy mistake to make. After all, the decay products of a neutron include a proton and an electron.