What the Atoms is Like

What the Atoms is Like

Perhaps you have seen a picture of the solar system with the sun in the centre and several planets, one of which is our Earth, revolving around it. Except for the fact that the atom is so small, and the sun and the planets so huge, they are much alike. Each atom has a centre, called its nucleus. In this centre are one or more particles called protons. A proton is a particle that has a positive electrical charge. Revolving around this centre, or nucleus, are particles of negative electricity called electrons.

An electron is very light. It takes 1,845 electrons to weigh as much as one proton. As you can read in the article on electricity, positive and negative electricity attract each other. You may have seen how this works with two magnets. Each magnet has a positive end and a negative end.

What Are Atoms?

What Are Atoms?

Everything in the universe is composed of tiny particles called atoms. Take the smallest grain of sand you can find, the smallest you can see with your naked eye, and there are still billions of atoms in it. For thousands of years, men have written and guessed about the nature of tiny particles like these, but they did not have any real idea of what an atom is like.

Thinking men in ancient Greece, including one named Democritus, 2,500 years ago, asked this question: What would happen if you should cut a piece of iron into smaller and still smaller pieces? You would finally get to a particle so small that you could not cut it further. They called this imaginary particle the atom, which in the Greek language meant "uncuttable." But they did not have any real idea of what an atom is like.