I want you to imagine me punching you hard, in the nose.

Trust me, it’ll help make this description much more fun! Imagine you said something rude about my mother, if it helps.

Did that hurt? I’m no fighter, but I imagine it probably did.

Why did it hurt?

Well my fist connected rather rapidly with your face, and that ought to do it.

But what does it mean to “connect”, or “touch”?

Our bodies are made up of cells, which are made up of atoms. And atoms are… well they’re mostly empty space.

An atom is a centralized region of extreme density and positive charge (the nucleus), surrounded by a region of standing ‘probability waves’ which describe the wave function of the electron.

In other words, an atom is basically a ‘fuzzy’ (technical term) ball of charges.

(The planetary orbital model you probably have in your head is about 100 years out of date — it comes from the 1913 Bohr model of the atom, which was superseded in 1925 by the Schrodinger model).

So.

How can I punch you, if your face, and indeed my hand, are just made up of fuzzy balls?

There’s no concept of “solid” at this level — so why should my hand make contact with your face?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/11/03/how-the-human-body-creates-electromagnetic-fields/#300d138256ea

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Fox.