My eldest granddaughter recently told me she has chemistry homework. Although she understands my quirks, I opted not to geek out on her by enthusing about how cool atoms are. I am, after all, a scientist. But, I’m telling you: they’re seriously amazing.
Atoms
The illustration above is of an atom (for those who may not remember back to chemistry). It’s helium, but that’s not important here. What’s important is that all the matter (stuff, as opposed to energy) in the universe is made of atoms.
Into the Weeds
So, referring to the picture, the red balls depict protons. They are positively charged and stay in the center (nucleus) of the atom. The green balls are neutrons. They have no charge, but if an atom has too many, it becomes radioactive. The yellow balls are MUCH smaller than the protons and neutrons and have a lot of energy. They zoom around the nucleus at high speed and are negatively charged.
So Cool!
There are so many awesome things about this, but here’s just one: the difference between all the kinds of atoms is that they have different numbers of protons. If an atom has one proton, it’s hydrogen, no matter how many neutrons or electrons are there. If it has two, it’s helium. If it has six, it is carbon and the basis of all life as we know it. Below is the periodic table–the numbers represent the number of protons. Gold (Au) has 79 protons.
There’s More!
Also remarkable, only 90 of these atoms occur naturally–the rest are manufactured by forcing protons together. Now, perhaps you’re wondering how only 90 basic units can account for the diversity around us. They combine into molecules. I’ll write more about that in a few weeks.
