At least I have no illusions about my vanity. I don't think you have any letters after your name. If you do, they should be forcibly taken away.
That is correct. They are not solid in the way you think of things as solid. They do not behave like, say, marbles or ball bearings.
No, I wouldn't suggest that. I'm not saying there aren't infinite layers of sub-particles, but I don't think there are.
Yes. Forces are the ONLY things that hold ANYTHING together. If this doesn't seem obvious to you, then your idea of what "force" is flat-out wrong.
Like I said before, the 1/r^2 dependence of many forces (electric field, magnetic field, gravity) is accurate on the macroscopic scale. On the atomic scale, things do not have a well-defined position, and do not therefore have a well-defined distance from each other. The 1/r^2 approximation does not work well on this scale.
i * h * derivative(Psi(x,t),t) = -h^2 / (2m) * derivative(Psi(x,t),x,x) + V(x) * Psi
where
Psi(x,t) = the wave function, a function of position and time
i = the square root of (-1)
h = hbar, a universal constant
m = the mass of the particle
V = the potential, a function of space
derivative(a,b) = the derivative of a with respect to b
derivative(a,b,b) = the second derivative of a with respect to b
That's the one-dimensional time-dependent Schrodinger wave equation. It's an empirical formula, but basically all of quantum mechanics is derived from it. Just solve that equation for Psi for a given potential V(x), then normalize Psi. Psi^2 gives you the probability density of the particle as a function of space and time. The 3-dimensional Schrodinger equation is even more complicated.
