Very soon I discovered that if one gets a feeling for no more than a dozen other radiation and nuclear constants, one can imagine the subatomic world almost tangibly, and manipulate the picture dimensionally and qualitatively, before calculating more precise relationships.
Subatomic particles exist in all possible states until they are observed - at which point something definite emerges from the soup of possibilities.
At least once per year, some group of scientists will become very excited and announce that: •The universe is even bigger than they thought! •There are even more subatomic particles than they thought! •Whatever they announced last year about global warming is wrong.