Atoms

What is an atom?
An atom a fundamental piece of matter. (Matter is anything that can be touched physically.)
Everything in the universe (except energy) is made of matter, and, so, everything in the universe is
made of atoms. Take anything apart and you'll find something smaller inside. There
are engines inside cars, pips inside apples, hearts and lungs inside people, and stuffing inside teddy
bears. But what happens if you keep going? If you keep taking things apart, you'll eventually, find that
all matter (all the "stuff" that surrounds us) is made from different types of atoms. Living things, for
example, are mostly made from the atoms carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. These are just three of
over 100 chemical elements that scientists have discovered. Other elements include metals such
as copper, tin, iron and gold, and gases like hydrogen and helium.

What are the parts of an atom?

Most atoms have three different subatomic particles inside them: protons, neutrons, and electrons.
The protons and neutrons are packed together into the center of the atom (which is called
the nucleus) and the electrons, which are very much smaller, whizz around the outside. When
people draw pictures of atoms, they show the electrons like satellites spinning round the Earth in
orbits. In fact, electrons move so quickly that we never know exactly where they are from one
moment to the next. Imagine them as super-fast racing cars moving so incredibly quickly that they
turn into blurry clouds—they almost seem to be everywhere at once. That's why you'll see some
books drawing electrons inside fuzzy areas called orbitals.

How do atoms make molecules and compounds?

Atoms are a bit like people: they usually prefer company to being alone. A lot of atoms prefer to join
up with other atoms because they're more stable that way. So hydrogen atoms don't exist by
themselves: instead, they pair up to make what is called a molecule of hydrogen. A molecule is the
smallest amount of a compound: a substance made from two or more atoms.

Not all molecules are as small and simple as water. Molecules of plastics, for example, can be made
of hundreds or even thousands of individual atoms joined together in incredibly long chains
called polymers. Polythene (also called polyethene or polyethylene) is a very simple example of this.
It's a polymer made by repeating a basic unit called a monomer over and over again—just like a coal
train made by coupling together any number of identical trucks, one after another.

A brief history of atoms

Who discovered the atom, how, and when? Let's quickly nip back through history...

 450 BCE: Ancient Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus became the first people to
propose that matter is made of atoms.
 1661: Anglo-Irish chemist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) suggested that chemical elements were
the simplest forms of matter.
 1803: English scientist John Dalton (1766–1844) published the atomic theory of matter. He
realized each chemical element was made up of atoms.
 1869: A Russian chemist called Dmitri Mendeleyev (1834–1907) found a logical way of
organizing the chemical elements with a neat structure called the Periodic Table.
 1896: French physicist Henri Becquerel (1852–1908) accidentally discovered radioactivity.
 1911: New Zealand-born English physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) "split" the atom:
he proved that atoms are made of smaller particles, eventually concluding they had a heavy,
positively charged nucleus and a largely empty area around them.
 2013: Scientists use a quantum microscope to take the first pictures inside a hydrogen atom.