I remember my mum being somewhat disgruntled about 30 or 40 or so years ago. I’m almost moved to say she was a mite miffed (see also England Raises Security Level from “Miffed” to “Peeved”).

The reason for mom’s ire was that she had just been informed that her understanding of the atom was incorrect.

Perhaps I should explain a little further. Mom started life poor and humble (although not as humble as me—it’s well known that I pride myself on my humility). Mom’s first job was as a junior in a typing pool. She worked her way up to being the personal assistant to Sir Maurice Alberic Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, who was the managing director of the largest engineering company in Europe at that time.

As a result, mom had offices in Sheffield (where I hail from), London, Aberdeen, Paris, and goodness only knows where else. This was long before things like photocopiers, fax machines, office computers, and the internet. All these offices were set up to be identical in terms of desks, typewriters, filing cabinets, etc. This meant that whenever Sir Maurice and his entourage visited one of their main facilities somewhere, mom could simply sit down in her office de jour and commence work.

Mom retired (for the first time) when Sir Maurice retired. She didn’t want to be the personal assistant to anyone else. She took a position at a local college teaching shorthand (Pitman, of course), typing, and business studies in English, French, and German, including teaching deaf students (her mom, my grandma, was deaf). She quickly rose through the ranks, first becoming a Senior Lecturer and later Principal Lecturer (I think she was only the sixth Principal Lecturer of the female persuasion in the UK at that time).

The reason I’m telling you all this is that mom grew tired of her peers—especially the male ones—looking down on her because she didn’t have a university degree. So, when she retired for the second time, she decided to correct this situation. It was while taking this degree that the class took a test.

One of the questions on the test was to describe the formation of atoms and molecules. When mom got her paper back, she was surprised to find her answer to this question was marked down. She had explained the atom in terms of protons, neutrons, and electrons. She’d never heard of quarks, which were first proposed in 1964 (the first physical evidence for their existence didn’t start to come in until 1968, and it wasn’t until 1995 that the top quark was observed for the first time).

As mum told the lecturer (I bet she had a steely glint in her eye—I know that glint well), the definition of an atom had changed multiple times in her lifetime and she wished they would get their act together and tie things down.

The phrase “The Stuff that dreams are made of” is a line of dialog from the 1941 movie The Maltese Falcon. It is a reference to a line from Shakespeare's play The Tempest: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

I’m not sure who first described quarks as “the dreams that stuff is made of,” but this phrase seems to become increasingly apposite the deeper we dive into the quantum rabbit hole where balancing one’s tempus fugit coils becomes evermore problematic.

Speaking of time (we weren’t, but we are now), as I mentioned in Is Time Truly an Illusion? and Swimming in a Sea of Quantum Foam: “It now appears that there really isn’t such a thing as space that 'contains' things, and there isn’t really such a thing as time during the course of which events occur.” Well, that certainly explains why I can’t get my time machine to work (you simply cannot find the spare parts where, and when, I live).

The reason for all my meandering musings is that I just ran across three videos that have left (what I laughingly refer to as) my mind gyrating on its gimbals. Look at the following videos: Visualizing the Proton, Visualizing the Nucleus, and Did AI Prove Our Proton Model Wrong? We can reconvene when you’ve finished.

Well, I don’t know about you, but my mind is well and truly boggled. I remember when I first explained quarks to my mom. She expressed her pleasure that we had finally tied things down. I dare not think what she’s going to say when she reads this blog.

While we await mom’s thoughts in dread anticipation, I’d be interested to hear anything you’d care to share about any of this.