Jobenads

When I was in high school I was asked to write a philosophical theory by one of my teachers. Actually the wife of my favorite teacher--He was my Latin teacher, and his wife was my Philosophy teacher.

Anyway, in an attempt to come up with something profound I authored the idea that everything was made of infinitessimally small particles, even smaller particles than we can now fathom...I believe at the time physicists and chemists were able to at least predict the location of electrons and there was even talk of smaller particles like quarks and neutrinos, but I am talking about the parts that make those things look big.

My postulation was that everything, no matter how small, could be split into something smaller, inifinitely. Imagine a piece of paper, 8.5 by 11 and that is what we might call an atom. While it is small, (relative to the planet) it can split into smaller particles, like the wood fibers and glue and dyes, etc...just like an atom can be seen as a certain number of neutrons and electrons orbiting them. If we continuously split it down farther and farther ad infinitum we get to the very essence, the lowest common denominator, the smallest of all building blocks. I called them Jobenads, (I was 17 and at the time the most important thing in the universe.)

I didn't get a good grade.