In the quest to reach colder and colder temperatures, physicists in 1995 created a remarkable new form of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). First envisioned by Albert Einstein and a young Indian physicist named Satyendra Bose in the 1920s, BECs reveal properties of quantum mechanics — their atoms seem to merge together and lose their individual identity, behaving less like discrete particles and more like waves. In this article from NOVA Online Luis Orozco of the University of Maryland, College Park offers some metaphors to help us begin to comprehend BECs and get a grasp of research in the strange world of ultracold atoms.