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Atoms and their Subatomic Particles

Today I decided to talk about a bit of my understanding on a section of science. Obviously I am no scientist, most people aren’t, but everybody does learn the subject of science during Primary and Secondary schooling and you end up getting some kind of grade for it after all is said and done – for me I got a C in Science and was one of my best results alongside Art, but I do think I could have got at least a B or even A if they had bumped me up to a higher tier, as the tier I was in I could only get the max of C, I think my ability in maths may have held me back there, but nonetheless it is good enough.   

Anyway, it makes sense mostly why it was one of my best subjects which is because it is one of the things that interests me most, with all the chemicals, metal elements, gas elements and so on. Strangely I also liked the formula sides of things such as for elements I like learning about their atoms and how many protons and neutrons are in their nucleus and how many electrons are around the nucleus, so 1is Hydrogen, the lightest and most abundant of the elements, the 1 is the atomic number and means it has one proton in the nucleus and the number of protons always mirrors the number of electrons so it also has 1 electron outside of the nucleus and finally it has no neutrons.  

You can figure out how many neutrons is in a nucleus by subtracting the atomic mass number from the atomic number, the atomic number is the small number next to the element symbol, the mass number is under the atomic number on periodic tables, since neutrons aren’t included in the atomic number but are included in the entire mass number alongside electrons and protons.  

So, let’s take a more complex one now, Iron which is 26Fe which as can be seen has an atomic number of 26, meaning it has 26 protons and 26 electrons and on the periodic table its atomic mass is 55.845 so first of all you round up the atomic mass to 56 since as can be seen the decimal is .845 and so is beyond halfway to the next number, then you subtract the atomic number which is 26 from the atomic mass which is 56, so 56 – 26 = 30 and so we can determine that a typical iron atom has 30 neutrons in its nucleus.  

So now we can solve the mystery of the featured image, which has 9 electrons but we are unable to see into the nucleus, but we already know that the number of electrons and protons will equal each other, so from that we know it will have 9 protons – then we look on the peroidic table for what elements has an atomic number of 9, which will be flourine – F. But how many neutrons does it have? Figure it out for yourself!

Maybe you are wondering what electrons, protons and neutrons even do within an atom. All three are known as subatomic particles and are what make an atom an atom and are what makes an element an element, they are basically the building blocks of everything. A proton is slightly lighter than a neutron and electrons are the lightest, a proton has a positive charge while an electron has a negative charge and neutrons are, well, neutral with no net electric charge. If we go even smaller protons and neutrons are made up of elementary particles called quarks and that’s as far as I am going with that as it gets super complex from there – and there is still much that scientists themselves are learning.  

I obviously can’t go into complex detail about what each subatomic particle does in an atom, but I can say that protons attract electrons and keep them in orbit around nucleus, they both attract each other and keep the atom together, these two particles are what make an atom an atom, an element an element. Neutrons keep the nucleus stable, allowing more than one proton to exist in the nucleus without them being repelled away, basically it allows more than just hydrogen to exist. Obviously, this is a very basic explanation and all the particles also do a whole lot more.  

If an electron is removed from an atom it will become positively charged as there are more positive protons than negative electrons, if an electron is added to an atom then it will become negatively charged as there are more electrons than protons, these are known as ions, a negatively charged ion is called an anion and a positively charged ion is called a cation, anions will have a – on the atomic symbol while cations have a + and these changes allow them to have different reactions when used in chemical properties and be used in different ways and are essential for a number of things to exist. They are still the same element, but they are just a little different to the usual element atom.  

An atom with neutrons added or removed, having a specific number of protons, is known as an isotope or nuclide. Again, they are still the same elements but just a bit different which means they can have different effects, mostly in nuclear properties rather than chemical properties, which is why many say now that calling isotopes, nuclides instead is a better term. It’s all complex sciency stuff basically but it all matters in some way and I am certainly not at all in a position to fully explain it, but the general understanding is there.  

I would honestly be interested in learning more on all this because I do find it all very interesting. And as I have already said this is all a very dumbed down explanation, similar to the way schools teach it. But even if you aren’t interested in becoming a scientist it is still cool to know this, the basis of which everything is made from – why should one not have a basic understanding of what’s all around them?  


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