Atom

I

Introduction

Atom, tiny basic building block of matter. All the material on Earth is composed of various combinations of atoms. Atoms are the smallest particles of a chemical element that still exhibit all the chemical properties unique to that element. A row of 100 million atoms would be only about a centimeter long. See also Chemical Element.

Understanding atoms is key to understanding the physical world. More than 100 different elements exist in nature, each with its own unique atomic makeup. The atoms of these elements react with one another and combine in different ways to form a virtually unlimited number of chemical compounds. When two or more atoms combine, they form a molecule. For example, two atoms of the element hydrogen (abbreviated H) combine with one atom of the element oxygen (O) to form a molecule of water (H₂0).

Since all matter—from its formation in the early universe to present-day biological systems—consists of atoms, understanding their structure and properties plays a vital role in physics, chemistry, and medicine. In fact, knowledge of atoms is essential to the modern scientific understanding of the complex systems that govern the physical and biological worlds. Atoms and the compounds they form play a part in almost all processes that occur on Earth and in space. All organisms rely on a set of chemical compounds and chemical reactions to digest food, transport energy, and reproduce. Stars such as the Sun rely on reactions in atomic nuclei to produce energy. Scientists duplicate these reactions in laboratories on Earth and study them to learn about processes that occur throughout the universe.

Throughout history, people have sought to explain the world in terms of its most basic parts. Ancient Greek philosophers conceived of the idea of the atom, which they defined as the smallest possible piece of a substance. The word atom comes from the Greek word meaning “not divisible.” The ancient Greeks also believed this fundamental particle was indestructible. Scientists have since learned that atoms are not indivisible but made of smaller particles, and atoms of different elements contain different numbers of each type of these smaller particles.

---

---

II

The Structure of the Atom

Atoms are made of smaller particles, called electrons, protons, and neutrons. An atom consists of a cloud of electrons surrounding a small, dense nucleus of protons and neutrons. Electrons and protons have a property called electric charge, which affects the way they interact with each other and with other electrically charged particles. Electrons carry a negative electric charge, while protons have a positive electric charge. The negative charge is the opposite of the positive charge, and, like the opposite poles of a magnet, these opposite electric charges attract one another. Conversely, like charges (negative and negative, or positive and positive) repel one another. The attraction between an atom’s electrons and its protons holds the atom together. Normally, an atom is electrically neutral, which means that the negative charge of its electrons is exactly equaled by the positive charge of its protons.

The nucleus contains nearly all of the mass of the atom, but it occupies only a tiny fraction of the space inside the atom. The diameter of a typical nucleus is only about 1 × 10^-14 m (4 × 10^-13 in), or about 1/100,000 of the diameter of the entire atom. The electron cloud makes up the rest of the atom’s overall size. If an atom were magnified until it was as large as a football stadium, the nucleus would be about the size of a grape.

A

Electrons

Electrons are tiny, negatively charged particles that form a cloud around the nucleus of an atom. Each electron carries a single fundamental unit of negative electric charge, or –1.

The electron is one of the lightest particles with a known mass. A droplet of water weighs about a billion, billion, billion times more than an electron. Physicists believe that electrons are one of the fundamental particles of physics, which means they cannot be split into anything smaller. Physicists also believe that electrons do not have any real size, but are instead true points in space—that is, an electron has a radius of zero.

Electrons act differently than everyday objects because electrons can behave as both particles and waves. Actually, all objects have this property, but the wavelike behavior of larger objects, such as sand, marbles, or even people, is too small to measure. In very small particles wave behavior is measurable and important. Electrons travel around the nucleus of an atom, but because they behave like waves, they do not follow a specific path like a planet orbiting the Sun does. Instead they form regions of negative electric charge around the nucleus. These regions are called orbitals, and they correspond to the space in which the electron is most likely to be found. As we will discuss later, orbitals have different sizes and shapes, depending on the energy of the electrons occupying them.

B

Protons and Neutrons

Protons carry a positive charge of +1, exactly the opposite electric charge as electrons. The number of protons in the nucleus determines the total quantity of positive charge in the atom. In an electrically neutral atom, the number of the protons and the number of electrons are equal, so that the positive and negative charges balance out to zero. The proton is very small, but it is fairly massive compared to the other particles that make up matter. A proton’s mass is about 1,840 times the mass of an electron.

Neutrons are about the same size as protons but their mass is slightly greater. Without neutrons present, the repulsion among the positively charged protons would cause the nucleus to fly apart. Consider the element helium, which has two protons in its nucleus. If the nucleus did not contain neutrons as well, it would be unstable because of the electrical repulsion between the protons. (The process by which neutrons hold the nucleus together is explained below in the Strong Force section of this article.) A helium nucleus needs either one or two neutrons to be stable. Most atoms are stable and exist for a long period of time, but some atoms are unstable and spontaneously break apart and change, or decay, into other atoms.

Unlike electrons, which are fundamental particles, protons and neutrons are made up of other, smaller particles called quarks. Physicists know of six different quarks. Neutrons and protons are made up of up quarks and down quarks—two of the six different kinds of quarks. The fanciful names of quarks have nothing to do with their properties; the names are simply labels to distinguish one quark from another.

Quarks are unique among all elementary particles in that they have electric charges that are fractions of the fundamental charge. All other particles have electric charges of zero or of whole multiples of the fundamental charge. Up quarks have electric charges of +’. Down quarks have charges of -€. A proton is made up of two up quarks and a down quark, so its electric charge is ’ + ’ - €, for a total charge of +1. A neutron is made up of an up quark and two down quarks, so its electric charge is ’ - € - €, for a net charge of zero. Physicists believe that quarks are true fundamental particles, so they have no internal structure and cannot be split into something smaller.