Series: GUT Check - The Timothian Model: A Mechanical Grand Unification of Physics
Model Ontology of the Timothian Model
A Roadmap to What is Included and Excluded, and Glossary
Ubiquitous primordial subatomic chunks of matter, varying in size and density, give rise to all the richness we observe in nature. All states of matter, energy, and forces can be understood as emergent behaviors of these chunks and the chunk medium they form.
This issue is the reference map for the vocabulary of the Timothian Model. It:
Defines the core ontological commitments (chunks, chunk medium, seeds, stratification spheres, PCS and lubricant chunks, flows, stratifications).
Clarifies which classical concepts are preserved, which are recast, and which are intentionally deprecated inside this series.
A concise Glossary at the end gives short, “reader-rescue” reminders for unfamiliar or Timothian-specific terms (e.g., seeds, chunk medium, Energetic Chunk Flows). It is meant for quick context, not full derivations.
This issue is the recommended pre‑read for everything in the series beyond the Preamble and The Universe in Your Kitchen.
Preamble – What terms and framing are used or excluded; why this model returns to pure Newtonian mechanics at every scale.
The Universe in Your Kitchen – Intuitive, kitchen‑scale analogies for the chunk medium, stratification, and buoyancy.
First Principles of the Timothian Model – Canonical list of first principles that all issues assume.
Helpful, but not required, for deeper context:
The Nature of Existence – 50,000‑foot view of how forces and structures fit together.
The Nature of Space – Detailed properties of the chunk medium.
This issue exists to prevent terminology collisions.
Most readers come to the Timothian Model fluent in language shaped by quantum mechanics and relativity. Many of those words carry assumptions that this model explicitly rejects (e.g., vacuum, field as a fundamental object, spacetime curvature, particle/wave duality). Others are retained but with sharpened or shifted meanings (e.g., gravity, pressure, time, entropy).
This issue:
States what we mean by key terms inside this series.
States what we do not mean, especially where mainstream usage would mislead.
Points to the issue where each term is unpacked in full.
Provides a glossary to rescue readers mid‑paper without forcing them to stop and backtrack.
You can think of this document as your decoder ring: once you’re fluent in this ontology, every other issue becomes easier to read and to connect.
The full discussion lives in First Principles of the Timothian Model; here is the condensed list as shared ontology.
No action at a distance.
All effects are local. Every interaction is mediated by real chunks in the chunk medium.
Same physics at all scales.
Newtonian mechanics applies equally to subatomic chunks, atoms, planets, and galaxies.
All forces are mass–pressure–flow interactions.
Gravity, magnetism, nuclear effects, and chemical forces arise from chunk distributions, pressure gradients, and flows in the medium.
Matter is simple chunks.
A piece of matter is a simple object with mass, size, density, and linear and angular motion.
No true vacuum.
Space is never empty. Every volume is filled with chunks (either free medium chunks or chunk aggregations), and backfill is mandatory when anything moves.
Waves are motions of matter.
EM waves, sound, and other waves are always oscillations of chunk species in the medium.
The universe tends toward homogeneity.
Entropy measures how homogeneous the chunk medium is in density, species, tension, motion, and chunk‑level deformation — how far gradients and unevenly shared deformation have been relieved.
Light speed and gravitational strength are medium‑dependent.
Measured c and effective G depend on local chunk density, tension, and species mix.
Quantum phenomena are emergent, not fundamental.
Quantization, line spectra, tunneling, and “uncertainty” arise from chunk constraints, interlocking, and environmental agitation.
Time is absolute and universal.
Time does not bend or flow. Clocks are processes whose rates are modulated by medium conditions (tension, motion, pressure), but there is one global, uniform time.
These principles are not re‑argued in every issue; they are assumed. If a term conflicts with these, the term is either recast or deprecated.
The following classical ideas are adopted essentially as‑is and treated as first principles in this model:
Newton’s Laws of Motion – Hold at every scale, applying to chunks, seeds, atoms, bodies, and chunk flows.
Conservation of mass, momentum, and energy – Reinterpreted as bookkeeping over chunk mass, kinetic agitation, and stratification tension.
Absolute Time – A single, universal time parameter; clocks are local processes whose rates vary, not time itself.
Determinism – Given the positions and velocities of all relevant chunk species and constraints at a time, their future evolution is fixed (even if not practically computable).
These everyday and physics terms are kept, but their meaning is rooted explicitly in chunk mechanics.
Space
Not an empty stage or curved nothing. Space is where the chunk medium lives and is defined by its local density, tension, and species mix.
Gravity
Gravity is the restoration push of the medium on bodies that displace it, plus buoyancy in the resulting stratified medium. Orbits are buoyant paths at stable points in that stratification.
Magnetic Field
Shorthand for organized flows and counterflows of specific chunk species, often with physical spin, along imprinted low‑resistance pathways in materials and the surrounding medium.
Electric Field / Charge / Current
“Charge separation” is a species‑specific pressure map of different chunk populations (often larger vs smaller chunks) across a structure. “Current” is the guided flow of those species through conductive pathways, with backfilling counterflows.
Light / Electromagnetic Waves
Always transverse oscillations of chunk species in the medium. Wave speed, dispersion, and transmissivity depend on local chunk density, tension, and species composition. Near black holes, this transmissivity can fail, defining an event horizon.
Pressure
Species‑resolved push and backfill of chunk populations through available pathways. Classical pressure is the net over active species.
Temperature / Heat / Work
Temperature: local average kinetic agitation of mobile chunk species.
Heat: net transfer of that agitation.
Work: directed equalization work done by chunk flows against structural constraints and stratification spheres.
Entropy
Not “disorder” but homogeneity in the chunk ledger: a measure of how evenly density, species, tension, motion, and chunk‑level deformation are shared. Higher entropy means fewer exploitable gradients and more evenly shared microspring deformation; lower entropy means special regions where some chunk populations carry extra deformation and can still drive flows.
Time Dilation Phenomena
Observed clock‑rate differences are recast as rate modulation: processes slow or speed up depending on medium tension, pressure, and motion, with time itself remaining uniform.
These concepts are not used as primitives inside the Timothian Model, except when carefully discussing other people’s models.
Action at a Distance – Rejected; all interactions are mediated by chunk‑medium processes.
Vacuum (as true emptiness) – Rejected; there is a no‑vacuum rule. “Vacuum” in this series means “no bulk atoms/molecules”, not “no matter at all”.
Spacetime Curvature – Replaced by stratification and tension profiles in the chunk medium.
Time Dilation (as time itself changing rate) – Recast as rate modulation of processes in different medium conditions.
Particle/Wave Duality & Point‑Particles in Superposition – Replaced by chunks (always matter) and waves (always motions of that matter).
Fields as ontologically primary – Field equations are kept as useful summaries but are interpreted as coarse descriptions of chunk mass, pressure, and flows.
Virtual Particles / Vacuum Energy as a physical sea – Replaced by real chunk species in a real, mass‑bearing medium.
When these words appear in later issues, they are either in quotation marks or explicitly framed as “classical language” being translated into Timothian terms.
This section gathers the new vocabulary introduced across the series into one coherent ontology.
Chunks
Primordial subatomic pieces of solid matter, varying in size, density, and possibly shape, with mass and the ability to move linearly and rotationally. They are the only fundamental building blocks in the model.
Chunk Species (the “zoo”)
Finite categories of chunk sizes/densities. Different species have different mobilities and roles in stratifications, flows, and oscillations. Collections of one species can support different oscillation bands than collections of another.
Chunk Medium
The aggregate of all chunks not currently locked into atomic or larger structures. It is the plenum that fills all of space, supports light, carries gravitational stratification, and channels magnetic flows. When this series speaks of “the medium”, “substrate”, “plenum”, or “primordial soup”, it refers to this medium.
Key properties:
Mass‑bearing and stratifiable (supports gravity and buoyancy).
Oscillation‑permissive (supports EM waves).
Flow‑permissive (supports magnetism, induction, and jets).
Drag‑inducing (limits high‑speed motion; defines disintegration velocity).
Seed (Atomic Seed)
The tightly packed core conglomeration of chunk species that defines an atom’s identity (classically “nucleus plus tightly bound inner structure”). Formed under early‑universe or stellar conditions, often “overstuffed” compared to modern medium pressures.
Stratification Spheres
Concentric, density‑graded layers of chunk species around a seed, formed by the interplay of seed displacement and ambient medium restoration forces. These replace probabilistic “electron shells” with mechanically stratified spheres of chunk species.
Spheres are also used at larger scales: planets, stars, and black holes sit inside stratification spheres of the chunk medium that define gravity, buoyancy points, and event horizons.
Primary Chunk Species (PCS)
The larger, denser chunk species that form mechanically interlocking frameworks in seeds, atoms, and materials. These are labeled PCS‑α, PCS‑β, … PCS‑ζ in Timothian Chemistry to capture their density hierarchy.
Lubricant Chunks
Smaller, more mobile chunk species that fill gaps between PCS chunks and provide the extra volume needed to allow rearrangements. Without sufficient lubricant volume beyond gap‑filling, PCS arrangements are mechanically locked and cannot rearrange.
Mechanical Click
A stable PCS arrangement where all local forces balance and chunks are interlocked; this corresponds to a “chemical bond” or another stable structure.
Lubrication Redistribution Barrier (LRB)
The mechanical barrier associated with how much lubricant must be redistributed from neighboring PCS environments to allow one PCS chunk to move. High LRB ↔︎ high activation energy / low reactivity.
Equalization Flows
Any chunk flow driven by pressure or tension gradients in the medium, tending toward homogeneity. Examples: gravity waves, induction eddy currents, convective flows, bulk restoration flows between over‑ and under‑tensioned regions.
Equalization Loops (Eddy Currents)
Closed‑loop chunk flows in conductors that arise when magnetic flow geometry changes in time, driven to eliminate new pressure imbalances. These loops eventually decay once local pressures stop changing.
Energetic Chunk Flows (ECFs)
Collimated, often polar, bulk flows of chunk species leaving environments like black‑hole poles. They are the Timothian interpretation of “relativistic jets”: guided escape corridors where stored structural potential is released along low‑impedance paths.
Homogeneity Functional
A conceptual measure of how flat the gradients are in a chosen ledger — density, species, tension, motion, and chunk‑level deformation. It increases as equalization flows and oscillations redistribute chunks and relieve stored microspring deformation. The thermodynamic arrow is the tendency of this functional to grow over time in the relevant ledger.
A conceptual measure of how flat the gradients in chunk density, tension, and flows are for a particular ledger (e.g., system + medium combined). Entropy increase is the tendency of this functional to grow over time.
Tension Ledger
The accounting of where stratification tension and elastic deformation reside — inside structured regions (atoms, stratification spheres, black holes) and in the surrounding medium. A configuration that looks “ordered” locally may still be part of a more homogeneous global state once the equal‑and‑opposite tension and deformation carried by the surrounding medium are included.
Arrow of Time
The observed one‑way direction of histories, arising because the chunk medium tends toward greater homogeneity in its tension/deformation ledger, not because time itself is asymmetric. Time is absolute and uniform; the arrow belongs to the monotonic relaxation of stored deformation and flattening of gradients.
Relative Solidity
How “hard” the medium feels to a moving object, determined by how much chunk mass per second the object must displace. At low speeds, the medium is “soft”; at high speeds it becomes effectively “wall‑like”.
Disintegration Velocity
The speed at which medium impacts on a structure become so intense that atomic stratification spheres fail and the object is mechanically shredded into chunk species. A genuine speed ceiling in this model, dependent on medium conditions and material structure.
Rotational Lock‑In
The phenomenon where a spinning body entrains nearby heavy chunk species into partial co‑rotation, capturing a corotating shell of medium mass and increasing its effective inertia (gyroscopes, spinning stars, black holes).
Chunk Machine
Any stable chunk structure (from simple catalysts to biological cells) that rectifies ambient chunk agitation and flows into directed internal processes (e.g., metabolism).
Rectifier (in Life/Chemistry)
A structure that converts oscillatory or random chunk motion into biased, directed flows (e.g., chlorophyll in photosynthesis, diodes, magnetic pathways).
Overstuffed Seed
An atomic seed formed under early‑universe pressures, now overpressured relative to the ambient medium and relaxing via leakage and discrete ejections (radioactive decay).
Rev 2 of Model Ontology also sets presentation standards that other issues can lean on for consistency and reader comfort:
Front‑Matter Structure
Series + Issue line
Title and subtitle (if any)
Author
Abstract (1–3 paragraphs)
Recommended Prerequisite Reading
Optional Reader Roadmap bullets
“In a Nutshell” Sections
Many issues already use a short “In a Nutshell” or bullet summary early in the paper. This will be maintained as a pattern so readers can quickly orient themselves.
Timothian vs Classical Callouts
Where a term is likely to be misinterpreted (e.g., field, vacuum, entropy), later issues should briefly include “Classical vs Timothian” callouts explaining the translation, rather than assuming the reader always has this ontology open.
Consistent Cross‑References
Issues should reference other issues by exact title (e.g., “See The Nature of Pressure”) rather than by informal shorthand, so new readers can navigate the series as a connected whole.
Glossaries for Specialized Issues
Highly specialized issues (e.g., Timothian Chemistry, The Nature of Life) should not repeat this full ontology, but may include a short local glossary of terms unique to that issue, always consistent with this document.
Once comfortable with this ontology, readers can take multiple paths:
Mechanics and Space First
The Nature of Space
The Nature of Gravity
The Nature of Stable Orbits
Atomic and Chemical Structure First
The Nature of Atoms, Charge, and Chemical Bonds
Timothian Chemistry
Thermo/Entropy Path
The Nature of Thermodynamics
The Nature of Entropy
The Nature of Radioactive Decay
Extreme Phenomena and Life
The Nature of Black Holes
The Nature of Motion
The Nature of Time
The Nature of Life
Short reminders only; see the referenced issue for full development.
Action at a Distance
Classical idea that bodies influence each other with no mediating substance. Not used in this model; all influences travel through chunk‑medium interactions.
Buoyant Point
The radius in a stratified medium where a body’s effective density matches the local medium; the body tends to float or orbit there. The Nature of Gravity, The Nature of Stable Orbits.
Chunk
Primordial subatomic piece of solid matter with mass, size, and density; can move linearly and rotationally. The only true building block.
Chunk Machine
Any structure (from catalysts to cells) that rectifies chunk agitation and flows into organized behavior (e.g., metabolism). The Nature of Life, Timothian Chemistry.
Chunk Medium
The mass‑bearing plenum of chunks not currently bound into atoms or larger bodies. Carries light, gravity, magnetism, and pressure. The Nature of Space.
Chunk Species
Discrete categories in the chunk zoo (different sizes/densities), each with characteristic roles in stratifications, flows, and oscillations.
Click (Mechanical Click)
A stable PCS arrangement (bond) where all forces balance and interlocking holds; corresponds to a stable chemical bond or structural configuration. Timothian Chemistry.
Current (Timothian)
Guided flows of chunk species (often larger chunks) through conductive pathways, accompanied by backfilling counterflows of smaller chunks; reinterprets electric current. The Nature of Induction, Timothian Chemistry.
Disintegration Velocity
Speed beyond which medium impacts tear apart atomic structure, shredding objects into chunk species. A real speed limit set by medium density and structure. The Nature of Motion.
ECF (Energetic Chunk Flow)
Collimated bulk flows of chunks along low‑impedance polar paths near black holes; Timothian analogue of astrophysical jets. The Nature of Black Holes.
Equalization Flow / Loop
Chunk flows driven by pressure/tension gradients that move systems toward homogeneity; loops are the closed versions (eddy currents) in induction and magnetic braking. The Nature of Induction, The Nature of Entropy.
Entropy (Timothian)
A measure of how homogeneous the chunk medium is in density, species, tension, motion, and chunk‑level deformation — in other words, how far gradients and unevenly shared microspring deformation have been relieved. Higher entropy = fewer gradients that can drive work. The Nature of Entropy.
Field (Timothian Usage)
Used only as shorthand for chunk‑medium pressure or flow maps. Fields are not ontologically primary; they summarize underlying chunk mechanics.
Gravity (Timothian)
The inward restoration push of the medium on displacing bodies, plus buoyancy in the resulting stratified medium. Orbits are buoyant paths. The Nature of Gravity.
Homogeneity Functional
Conceptual measure of how flat the gradients are in a chosen ledger (density, species, tension, motion, deformation). It increases as equalization flows and oscillations redistribute chunks and relieve stored deformation; its monotonic tendency to grow defines the thermodynamic arrow of time. The Nature of Entropy.
Inertia (Timothian)
Resistance to changes in motion arising because the medium must simultaneously backfill and reorganize around moving bodies; a reaction from chunk backfill, not a mysterious intrinsic property. The Nature of Motion.
Lubricant Chunks
Smaller, more mobile chunk species that fill gaps between PCS chunks and allow rearrangements; necessary for flexibility, conductivity, and chemical reactivity. Timothian Chemistry.
Lubrication Redistribution Barrier (LRB)
Mechanical barrier associated with how much lubricant must be redistributed to move a PCS chunk; correlates with activation energy. Timothian Chemistry.
Medium‑Dependent Light Speed
The idea that measured c depends on local chunk density and tension; different regions of the universe can support different limiting EM propagation speeds. First Principles, The Nature of Space.
No‑Vacuum Rule
Gaps are not allowed; every volume must contain chunks. When matter moves, the medium must backfill simultaneously. Motion can stall or structures can fail, but empty space never opens. The Nature of Space, The Nature of Pressure.
Overstuffed Seed
Atomic seed formed under high early‑universe pressures that is now overpressured relative to the ambient medium and slowly relaxing via leakage/ejection (radioactive decay). The Nature of Radioactive Decay.
PCS (Primary Chunk Species)
Larger, denser chunk species that form mechanical frameworks in atoms and materials; labeled PCS‑α, PCS‑β, etc., in Timothian Chemistry.
Pressure (Timothian)
Species‑resolved chunk push and backfill through available pathways; classical pressure is the net. The Nature of Pressure.
Quantum Phenomena (Timothian View)
Observed quantization, tunneling, and spectral lines are emergent from discrete chunk sizes, interlocking, lubrication limits, and environmental agitation—no fundamental probabilistic ontology required. First Principles, The Nature of Atoms, Charge, and Chemical Bonds.
Relative Solidity
How resistant the medium feels to motion at a given speed—soft at low relative velocity, effectively solid at high velocity when encountered chunk mass per second is large. The Nature of Motion.
Restoration Force
Generic term for the chunk medium’s push back toward homogeneity and baseline stratification when displaced by masses or flows; gravity is a major example. The Nature of Gravity, The Nature of Space.
Seed
Tightly packed, mechanically interlocked conglomeration of chunk species that defines an atom’s identity; surrounded by stratification spheres. Also overstuffed seeds in radioactive decay. The Nature of Atoms, Charge, and Chemical Bonds, The Nature of Radioactive Decay.
Stratification Spheres
Concentric layers of chunk species around seeds or macroscopic bodies, sorted by density and inertia under ambient tension profiles. Replace shells and curved spacetime in this model. The Nature of Space, The Nature of Gravity, The Nature of Black Holes.
Tension Ledger
Bookkeeping device for where stratification tension and chunk‑level elastic deformation are stored (inside structures vs in the surrounding medium). Required for correct global entropy accounting in systems with strong stratification (planets, stars, black holes). The Nature of Entropy, The Nature of Black Holes.
Time (Timothian)
Absolute and universal; not a flowing substance. Clocks measure rates of local reconfiguration of chunks; those rates are modulated by medium tension, pressure, and motion. The Nature of Time.
Vacuum (Timothian Usage)
Colloquial shorthand for “no bulk atoms/molecules” while the chunk medium is still present. Never true emptiness.
Wave
Any propagating pattern of chunk motions—pressure waves (sound) or transverse oscillations (EM). Always motions of matter, never abstract fields in nothingness. The Nature of Light & Electromagnetic Waves, The Nature of Pressure.
This appendix collects a few high-risk terms where classical usage and Timothian usage are easy to conflate. Each entry is intentionally short: enough to rescue a reader who feels lost, while pointing them back into the main issues for full treatment.
Classical usage
“Vacuum” is often taken to mean truly empty space: no atoms, no molecules, and (in some formulations) nothing but abstract fields.
In practice, lab “hard vacuum” means “no gas species above some threshold,” but the mental model is still “almost nothing is here.”
Timothian usage
There is no such thing as empty space in the Timothian Model. The chunk medium is always present. Every volume is filled with subatomic chunks (either as free medium species or as part of larger structures).
“Vacuum” in this series is species- and scale-specific, never absolute:
A “vacuum chamber” means absence of bulk atoms/molecules above some density, while the subatomic chunk medium still fills that chamber and its walls.
A “vacuum for X” (e.g., a band of EM radiation or a chemical species) means that particular class of structure or chunk species is missing or negligible at the scale in question, not that all species are absent.
The no-vacuum rule: you may have a vacuum of a given thing at a given scale, but you never have a vacuum of everything. The medium is always there, and all forces are mediated through it.
Classical usage
Gravitational, electric, magnetic, and other fields are treated as fundamental, massless entities spread over spacetime, carrying energy and momentum on their own.
In many modern treatments the field is the ontology; the existence of any underlying substance is optional or ignored.
Timothian usage
Fields are not fundamental objects. They are convenient summaries of what the chunk medium is doing.
A “field” is a map over space of properties of the medium:
chunk density and species mix,
pressure and tension profiles,
flow directions and magnitudes,
oscillation patterns,
spin/rotation biases of chunk assemblies.
In other words, a “massless field” is always recast here as an array of interacting chunk masses and processes in the medium:
Gravitational field → stratification and restoration forces in the chunk medium.
Electric field → species-resolved pressure map for particular chunk populations.
Magnetic field → organized flows and counterflows of specific chunk species along low-impedance pathways.
The existing field equations remain useful, but they are interpreted as coarse bookkeeping over a real, massive medium, not as equations for an independent, massless substance.
Classical usage
Entropy is often introduced as “disorder” or as “the logarithm of the number of microstates,” with the Second Law summarized as “closed systems evolve toward higher disorder.”
This framing is notoriously vague when gravity, strong stratifications, or highly ordered structures are involved.
Timothian usage
Entropy is not about disorder. In the Timothian Model, entropy measures how homogeneous the chunk medium is at the scale and for the ledger we care about:
homogeneity of chunk densities and species distribution,
homogeneity of tension (stratification stresses),
homogeneity of flows and oscillations.
Low entropy = strong gradients and structured stratifications that can still drive equalization work (stored order / tension).
High entropy = those gradients have been largely flattened by chunk equalization flows, loops, and oscillations.
Locally ordered structures (crystals, stratified interiors of black holes, imprinted magnetic paths, overstuffed seeds, etc.) are not exceptions to the Second Law; they are places where tension and structure are concentrated, balanced by opposite changes in the surrounding medium’s ledger.
The Second Law becomes: the chunk medium, under Newtonian dynamics, tends to erase gradients and spread tension out. “Entropy increase” is the steady rise of an appropriate homogeneity functional, not a mysterious preference for chaos.
Classical usage
In relativity, time is tied into spacetime: clocks in different gravitational potentials or moving at different speeds tick at different rates, and this is often described as “time itself running slower or faster.”
“Time dilation” is then interpreted as a literal stretching of time between observers.
Timothian usage
Time is absolute, uniform, and universal. There is one shared timeline for the universe; time does not bend, flow, or run at different intrinsic rates.
A clock is any repeatable physical process counting its own chunk reconfigurations (rotations, oscillations, chemical cycles, decay steps, etc.).
Different environments change how much work each tick of that process must do against the chunk medium:
In regions of higher medium tension, drag, or stratification, more equalization work per cycle → processes run slower.
In regions of lower tension or better lubrication, less work per cycle → processes run faster.
What is called “time dilation” in relativity is interpreted here as rate modulation of physical processes, not a change in time itself. The underlying clock-comparisons are real; the interpretation (“time runs differently”) is what we replace.
Classical usage
Atoms are modeled as a compact nucleus surrounded by “electron shells” or orbitals: discretized energy levels where pointlike electrons are most likely to be found.
These shells are inherently quantum objects; their structure is described by probability amplitudes rather than literal layers of matter.
Timothian usage
The Timothian Model does not use electrons orbiting in shell diagrams as fundamental. Instead, atoms are composed of:
An atomic seed – a tightly packed, mechanically interlocked conglomeration of chunk species formed under high-pressure conditions.
Surrounding stratification spheres – concentric regions of the chunk medium mechanically sorted by chunk density and inertia.
Each stratification sphere is a chunk sphere dominated by one primary chunk species (PCS) plus a characteristic mix of more mobile lubricant chunks:
Common-density chunk populations define the layer,
PCSs provide structure and interlocking,
Lubricant chunks fill gaps and allow limited rearrangements.
The “quantized” behaviors that are attributed classically to electron shells (discrete lines, specific bonding patterns) arise here from:
The finite, discrete set of mechanically stable seed + sphere configurations,
The fact that only certain PCS/lubricant ratios and chunk-sphere geometries can “click” into stable arrangements.
When this series needs to translate classical language, “electron shell” should be read as “a particular stratification sphere of chunk species around an atomic seed”—a real, finite-thickness volume of matter, not a probabilistic cloud of point charges.