Sorry for the wall of text , but this is a pet peeve of mine . We cannot really touch anything is a fun fact that sounds flashy and interesting , but is entirely meaningless . By all sensible definitions of the word touch , we are able to touch our surroundings . It just happens to be , that the microscopic image of what we call touch does not align with our macroscopic intuition . When we think of two bodies touching , we imagine two surfaces bumping into each other . On a subatomic level , however , that ' s just not how things work . For starters , subatomic particles do not have surfaces . Electrons , protons and neutrons are not hard little balls . Electrons probably have no spatial extension whatsoever . They are most likely pointlike . Thus , what we imagine when we say we touch something cannot ever happen on a subatomic scale . What actually happens is , that the particles interact electromagnetically and via the Pauli exclusion principle . I ' ll explain what that means later onHowever , this does not mean that we cannot touch our surroundings . Since it is not possible to touch something microscopically , it is entirely pointless to base the definition of the word touch on a microscopic process . Instead , we base it on the macroscopic world , where a meaningful definition of the word touch is actually possible . When two equally charged particles like two electrons come in close contact to each other , they repel each other . And the closer they get , the more they repel proportionally to r 2 . Since the outer layer of atoms is the electron shell , two atoms that come in close contact will be repelled by their equally charged electron shells . Further more , you might have heard of the Pauli exclusion principle . It states that two particles to be exact to fermions cannot be in the same location at the same time . The precise formulation is , that the wave function of two particles must be antisymmetic . When you sit on a chair , your butt cannot pass through the wood of the chair , because that would mean that a lot of electrons in your body have to pass through the domain of electrons in the chair . Due to the exclusion principle , that cannot happen .