why can’t you plant atoms?

Answer

Dear Joren,

A lot is possible in comics and if atoms were flower bulbs, that would be possible. The question then is indeed what are “atoms”? This word was invented, so to speak, to indicate the elementary building blocks of all matter, both so-called dead matter and living matter. Everything we can grasp is made up of atoms. In that sense you have iron atoms, carbon atoms, hydrogen atoms, oxygen atoms, etc. about 100 species, no more. With those 100 or so atoms we can build up all the substances we know, so that is not something you can plant in the strict sense. Now since those are the building blocks of all matter, atoms are also incredibly small, a typical diameter of an atom is 0.000 000 1 mm, about one millionth of a millimeter. You can’t just grab hold of that, only when you have billions and billions of atoms together will you see something lying around.

Regards