Q1.
Do you know that since ancient times, people have been thinking about how far things could be broken down and what is matter made up of?
Answer
Yes. In India this question was raised very long ago by Acharya Kanad, an ancient Indian philosopher, who first spoke about the idea of a Parmanu (atom).
- He held that matter is made up of tiny, indivisible, eternal particles called Parmanu.
- This idea is set down in his work, the Vaisheshika Sutras.
Notice how close his question is to yours. Activity 7.1 asks exactly what he asked — go on breaking a piece of matter, and does the breaking ever have to stop? He answered by reasoning alone; today the same conclusion is supported by experiment, by the way sugar dissolves, by the way air can be compressed and by the way a colour spreads through still water.
Where the modern account differs: this chapter is careful to say only that the constituent particles are the smallest units of that substance. It does not claim that nothing inside them can ever be found. What those particles are — atoms and molecules — is taken up in A step further on page 115 and studied properly in higher grades.