User:Ofmelabes

 atomicity refers to the atomic character of all interactions and structures of matters. The Greek word atom means unbreakable. An interaction, or a structure, may be decomposed into more elementary units, but eventually these units reach the level at which they are atomic and therefore not decomposable.

The original motivation for a theory of atomicity came from the observation that nature seemed to recycle everything. This led to the notion that everything was made up of certain elements that recombined in different ways in the recycling process. Epicurean philosophy used atomic theory to explain recycling, as expressed by \index{Lucretius, variously translated as {\em The Nature of Things}, or {\em The Way Things Are}. The basic three features of atoms and atomicity at the heart of modern {\sc quantum mechanics} are