The word ‘œatom’ is of Greek origin, which means ‘œundivided.’ The Greeks used to believe that atoms cannot be divided further but now we know that it’s not true. Atoms can be divided into protons, neutrons and electrons.
Atom is the basic chemistry unit, consisting of mainly three parts- neutron, proton and electron. The nucleus consists of protons and neutrons which are wrapped in a dense cloud of electrons, arranged in different shells. Here are some more interesting facts about atoms.
Most of the space in an atom is empty and scientists have concluded that there can be upto two hundred sub-atomic particles within an atom. The most common among them are proton, neutron and electron.
The electrons are negatively charged particles in the atom while protons are positively charged. Neutrons are uncharged or the neutral bodies. An uncharged atom has equal number of electrons and protons to balance the opposite charges. Exception is the Hydrogen atom whose nucleus has only one proton.
Deuterium is an isotope of H that has a proton and a neutron in the nucleus while tritium has two neutrons and a proton. Isotope of an element is one having similar number of protons, hence almost same chemical composition.
It becomes positively charged when the atom loses an electron from its outermost shell or orbit. Consequently, it becomes negatively charged by gaining an electron from the outermost shell of any other atom.
It is said that a drop of water contains about 2 sextillion i.e. (1021) oxygen of atoms. Amazingly, the diameter of a human hair is almost 100 nano-meters which can comprise around 1,000,000 carbon atoms. Almost 98% of the atoms in a human body are replaced every year.
In nature, there are ninety two different naturally occurring elements. The rest are artificially made in laboratories. The first artificially made atom was technetium with an atomic weight 43.
The mass of proton is almost the same as that of neutron while it is around 1840 times greater than that of the mass of electron.
The most easily and widely available element is the universe is the Hydrogen. There are approximately 10 million compounds that can be derived off the element carbon.
You will be surprised to know that there are almost 15 elements in the periodic table, whose initials are ironically the postal code of any state of U.S. For example, Minnesota is Mn which stands for manganese; Ar is the code for Arkansas which stands for Argon etc. La stands for Lanthanum and also the state of Louisiana, Indium has an initial of In which is also the code for Indiana. The code for Aluminum is Al, which is also the code for Alabama.
In an atom, it is the electron that is responsible for reacting with other fundamental bodies, forming bonds. The interaction between two or more electrons is known as a chemical bond. In H2O, two hydrogen electrons from the outer shell combine with one oxygen electron to form water.
Quarks are small elements present in an atom that helps in their composition. Quarks are quite small almost 1000 times smaller than a Hydrogen atom.
