Weekly Assignment 10/17

An atom is made up of a nucleus holding a certain number of positively charged protons and neutrally charged neutrons. This nucleus is surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The charge that holds these protons and electrons together is called a electromagnetic force. This force holding them together also tries to push the protons apart and that is where the neutrally charged neutron comes into play to keep the protons from pushing away from each other in the nucleus. Each atom has a specific number of protons and this number is what determines the element that the atom is. The protons also determine the Atomic number of an atom and sometimes the electrons if the atom is neutral. To find the mass number, you add together the neutrons and protons, and to find the neutrons you subtract the mass number and the proton number. An atom is called an isotope when it has different mass numbers. When an atom has different mass numbers then it can have different neutron numbers as well. Ions are atoms that gain and lose electrons. When an atom gains an electron it is called a cation, and when an atom loses an electron it is called a anion.

If you want to pull an an atom apart, you have to start with the electrons. There are many ways that you can pull an atom apart, some ways being shining a light on the electrons to push them apart, or exposing the electrons to another electromagnetic force. There is also many other ways to pull an atom apart but the main thing that will do the trick is heat. The heat makes the atoms move around and hit each other. The first electron will be easy to strip apart, but then as the electrons go on, it gets harder to pull apart. Once all the electrons are gone, you are left with just a nucleus. The process of stripping apart the nucleus is pretty much the same exact process of stripping apart the electrons. Even though I just talked about this long process of pulling apart an atom, you can also easily just hit it hard enough with something firm and it will break the atom apart into tinnier bits and pieces. Once breaking apart an atom, you can find that electrons are made up of even smaller parts called quarks. Quarks are held together by the same extremely strong force that hold the nucleus together. Also a fun fact about pulling apart an atom is that if you hit an atom hard enough, you might find even more bits and pieces of energy particles that you didn't know was there before!

Albert Einstein believed that atoms bounce off of each other in a way that's called Brownian Motion. He also believed that the mathematical equation for the Brownian Motion is evidence of the existence of atoms. He also concluded that you can determine the size of an atom based on how they move around.