Question

1. Why can we state that most of the volume of matter, such as the tabletop you are writing on, is actually empty space?

2. When you drive up your driveway at night, you see the light from the headlights on the garage door, but not in the air between the car and the door. Why? What would be observed if the night were foggy?

Answer 1

1) We can state that most of the volume is actually an empty space because everything is made up of atoms and Rutherford experiment proved atoms are mostly empty space. Now, one may ask that if these are mostly empty space then why do they, for example the table top I am writing on, appears solid. It’s because, an electron in a low energy level around one nucleus can't do the same around the other; that slot's already taken by one of its own electrons. So pushing just two atoms close to each other takes energy, as all their electrons need to go into unoccupied high-energy states.