The world we live in is made of things, billions and billions of different things,
我们生活的世界由各种物品组成，数十亿个不同的物品，
like pickles and pianos and dump trucks and octopi.
像酸黄瓜、钢琴、砂石车、章鱼。
And even though these things seem totally different,
即使这些物品看起来完全不同，
they're all made of the same stuff, just combined in different ways.
但它们都是由同样的东西组成的，只是以不同方式结合。
To give you an idea of how this combining works, let's take something apart.
为了让你知道这结合的原理为何，我们来做拆解动作。
Let's start with this bowl of macaroni salad.
就从这碗通心粉沙拉讲起吧。
If you were to reverse a recipe for macaroni salad,
假使你倒着看通心粉沙拉食谱，
you'll see it's made by mixing together a bunch of ingredients, like macaroni, mayo, vinegar, vegetables, and mustard.
你会发现它是由一堆食材制成的，像是通心粉，蛋黄酱，醋，蔬菜和芥末酱。
This type of combining is called a mixture.
这种类型的结合称作混合物。
When you make a mixture, you're combining two or more things together without actually changing the chemical identity of those things.
当你做一种混合物时，你是将两种或两种以上的物品结合，但没有改变任何物品的化学特性。
Like mud, for example. The soil and water in mud haven't actually changed.
举例来说，泥浆。泥浆由土壤和水结合，本质并没有改变。
They're still soil and water, you've just created a mixture of soil and water -- mud.
它们还是土壤和水，你只是创造了土壤和水的混合物，泥浆。
It turns out that macaroni salad is actually a mixture of mixtures
事实上，通心粉沙拉是由许多混合物所组成的混合物，
because many of the ingredients, like mayo and mustard, are already mixtures themselves,
因为里面有许多食材，像是蛋黄酱和芥末酱，本身就已经是混合物，
which is nice for us because if we look closely, we'll the see the three main types of mixtures that exist.
这样对我们来说正好，因为如果我们仔细看，我们会看到三种主要的混合物存在。
The size of the particles in a mixture determines the type of mixture.
混合物中的颗粒大小决定了混合物的类型。
On one end of the scale is a suspension, like our muddy water example.
在刻度的一端是悬浮液，就像刚刚举的泥水的例子。
You get this if you take big chunks of something and mix it with something else so those chunks are just floating around.
你把一大块东西和别的东西混在一起，这些块状体到处浮动。
Take runny mustard for example.
拿芥末来说吧。
You'll see a bunch of little particles like mustard seeds, pepper, allspice, and minced shallots
你们能看到许多小颗粒，比如芥菜籽，胡椒，香料和剁碎的青葱，
all floating around in a liquid, in this case vinegar with water.
都在一种液体中漂浮，在芥末中，液体是醋和水。
This is called a suspension because you've got particles of one thing suspended in another.
这个叫做悬浮液体，因为是一种物体的颗粒浮在另一个物体中。
Now, on the other end of the spectrum is a solution.
另一系列的液体叫做溶液。

The particles in this mixture are so small, they are the actual molecules.
这个混合物中的颗粒太小，它们实际上是分子。
A solution is sort of like a suspension of molecules where one type of molecule is blended or dissolved with another.
溶液有点像悬浮的分子，里面一种分子混合或溶解在另一个物体中。
Vinegar is an example of a solution where the molecules of acetic acid are blended with molecules of water.
醋是溶液的一个例子，里面的醋酸分子混合在水分子里。
The chemical properties of the molecules haven't changed, they're just evenly mixed together now.
分子的化学性质没有改变，它们只是均匀地混合在一起。
Saltwater and carbonated soda are both examples of solutions where other molecules are dissolved in water.
盐水和碳酸苏打都是一种溶液，都是一种分子溶解在水中。
The last type of mixture is called a colloid, which is somewhere between a suspension and a solution.
最后一种混合物叫做胶体，介于悬浮液体和溶液之间。
It's when you take two materials that don't dissolve and you make the particles so small that they can't separate.
这是当你把两种原来不能混合的物质结合，且把颗粒弄得非常小，以至于不能分开。
Mayo is what happens when you take oil and water, which don't mix, and you bind them together,
蛋黄酱就是你把油及水这两种不能混合之物结合在一起后的产物，
usually with the help of another substance called an emulsifier.
这通常需要另一种物质的帮助，称为乳化剂。
In the case of mayo, it's lecithin, found in eggs.
在蛋黄酱中，蛋黄中的卵磷脂就是乳化剂。
And now you are left with really small globs of oil hanging out with really small droplets of water.
所以现在你得到了由非常小的油滴与非常小的水滴混合在一起的物品。
Whipped cream, hairspray, Styrofoam, and Jello are all other examples of colloids.
鲜奶油，发胶，泡沫塑料和果冻都是一种胶体。
So, let's get back to macaroni salad.
我们再次回到通心粉沙拉。
You've call colloids like mayo, suspensions like mustard, and solutions like vinegar,
我们有胶体，比如蛋黄酱，像芥末的悬浮液体，还有溶液，醋，
but you've also got celery, shallots, and all other vegetable chunks that are also part of the salad.
但是我们也有芹菜，青葱，还有其它的块状蔬菜，它们也是沙拉的一部分。
These aren't mixtures, really, but we can break them up,
它们其实不是混合物，但是我们可以把它们分解，
just like a TV can be broken up into smaller and smaller complex component parts.
就像电视机可以被分解成更小，更复杂的零部件。
In the case of vegetables, if you keep breaking things up,
拿蔬菜来讲，如果我们一直把它们分解下去，
they'll eventually end with thousands of complex organic molecules,
它们终究会变成成千上万个复杂的有机分子，
things like ATP synthase and RNA transcriptase and water.
比如三磷酸腺苷合酶和逆转录酶，还有水。
So now, once we've unblended all the solutions, unmixed all the colloids,
现在，我们已经拆散了所有的溶液，分解了所有的胶体，
separated all the suspensions and taken apart all of our vegetables,
分开了所有的悬浮液体，剖解了所有的蔬菜，
we've reached the end of what we can unmix physically.
从物理的角度，我们分解了所有的东西。
What we're left with is a whole bunch of molecules,
只剩下一大堆分子，
and these molecules remain chemically the same whether they are by themselves or thrown together in a salad.
这些分子的化学性质依旧保持不变，不管是单独的，还是一起放到沙拉里。
If you want to separate these guys even further,
如果你想继续分解下去，
we need to unmix things chemically, which means we need to start breaking some bonds.
我们需要从化学角度分解，也就是说我们需要破坏掉一些化学键。