In the last century, physicists have refined our understanding of the structure of reality to an extreme. While this has served to propel technological development, it means that scientists spend a lot of time thinking about things in the mathematical abstract and at otherwise unfathomable scales. The Fundamental Physics of Touch is an attempt to make modern physics more physical.

The prints depict solutions to the Schrödinger wave equation for electrons in the hydrogen atom at various energy levels. Created using Python code, the plots show the pattern that would emerge after making 20,000 measurements of the position of an electron. The Pauli exclusion principle states that these forms are forbidden to overlap. This, along with the electromagnetic force causing electrons to repel, is what keeps atoms separate: Instead of coalescing, we touch.

The composition is inspired by a found physics textbook that was published in 1894—a decade before Neils Bohr theorized electron orbitals and two decades before Erwin Schrödinger derived the wave equation visualized here. The off-white paper and tactile printmaking process evoke the passage of time and the manual care that was once put into the dissemination of knowledge. The spread of dots illustrates quantum uncertainty at the smallest scale. If the forms are beautiful, mother nature made it so.