Summary
One of the easiest things to understand in chemistry is the model of an atom. An atom is like a mini solar system. It has a nucleus, which is like the sun, and electrons whirling around the nucleus, like planets.
After this it gets complicated fast, and since I am not a physicist or a chemical engineer, I can't explain it with any authority. In fact it would be easier for all concerned if you didn't literally believe anything you read here. But it turns out the nucleus is made of two kinds of particle, protons and neutrons. The protons and electrons have electrical charges that offset each other and make an energy balance in the atom. Each atom has a "weight" according to its number of protons, neutrons and electrons. In the subatomic world where the electrons, protons and neutrons live, there are many other particles -- fermions and bosons being the main categories, with leptons, hadrons, photons and more and more defined all the time. There are also such things as antiparticles, where, for example, for every electron there is a positron, meaning an electron particle with an opposite electric charge. But the complications of particle physics here start to outdistance the recognizable natural world where this writing is trying to live.See the full content of this document
Extract
Amateur Naturalist: Models of Behavior
There are structures underlying structures in the subatomic world. For example, inside atoms are different kinds of quarks, which the physicists call up, down and strange. There might be a p...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
