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Atoms Never Touch
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About
Atoms Never Touch refers to memes, including webcomics, image macros and videos, about the fact that atoms never technically touch each other. The jokes were popularized by a viral 2020 comedy skit where a man explains to a police officer that atoms technically never touch, meaning he didn't actually punch a kid. The video inspired fan animations reenacting it on TikTok and comics and memes.
Origin
At an atomic level, atoms technically never touch. An outer shell of electrons surrounds every atom, which repels against other electrons as they have the same charge. This technically means you never touch anything, with feeling being attributed to the repulsion of the electrons. This is explained in a video by VSauce uploaded to YouTube[1] on September 3rd, 2011, gaining over 6.8 million views in 10 years (shown below). It was also explained by Futurism.[2]
On January 28th, 2020, TikToker[3] @liamtheyee (Liam) posted a skit wearing a towel on his head saying, "did you know that atoms never touch each other and since we're made of atoms we've never touched anything in our entire lives. So to answer your questions, no officer I did not punch that kid" (shown below). The video gained over 2.5 million views in just under two years.
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6786859321247419653
Spread
The Original Sound for Liams's video became notably popular, inspiring over 30,000 videos on TikTok in just under two years. On March 23rd, TikToker @jonathan.zhang posted a video where each word in the audio appears on a TI-84 Plus CE calculator, gaining over 7.8 million views in roughly two years (shown below).
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6807399561955396870
The video also inspired webcomics. On April 11th, Imgur[6] user GibThom uploaded a comic reimagining the TikTok (shown below). On July 8th, Instagram[7] webcomic creator cathoardercomics posted a webcomic based on the audio (shown below, right).
Many people uploaded original animations reimagining the video. On June 21st, TikToker[4] @king.science posted a video to the sound, gaining over 30 million views in a year (shown below, left). On July 29th, TikToker[5] @mark_kacy posted an animation, gaining over 10 million views in a similar span of time (shown below, right).
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6840893405996813574
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6854509984500305158
On November 29th, Instagram[8] user memelord posted an image macro referencing the video, gaining over 83,000 likes in 11 months (shown below).
The fact that atoms never touch is frequently shared by science and fact social media pages, such as by Instagram[9][10] pages quantum.universe and conspirious in February and July 2021 respectively (shown below, left and right).
Various Examples
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6863452647601573125
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6795492865947503878
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6980402222962052357
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6843800217666538758
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6983584126095871258
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6981349027187150085
Search Interest
External References
[1] YouTube – You Can't Touch Anything
[2] Futurism – Why Physics Says You Can Never Actually Touch Anything
[3] TikTok – liamtheyee
[4] TikTok – king.science
[6] Imgur – Atoms don't touch
[7] Instagram – cathoardercomics
[9] Instagram – quantum touch
[10] Instagram – conspirious
