stated clearly presents what are atoms made of as we learned in the last animation the word atom means uncuttable and when John Dalton first discovered evidence that atoms exist he gave them that name because he genuinely thought that they were uncuttable he thought they were fundamental particles the smallest bits of matter that exist well it turns out that he was wrong atoms can be split apart they are made of subatomic particles most importantly electrons protons and neutrons protons and neutrons appear to be made a smaller particle still and truth be told we don't know for
sure if there really is an end to smallness reality might just keep going on forever and ever the further you zoom in so there is something strange to think about this image was made of data collected from an actual scan of a single nitrogen atom fixed to a metal surface what we're actually seeing here is the outside of what is called the electron cloud the outer edges of the atom the colors here are artificial but this is the real shape of a nitrogen atom here to the right we see a simplified model of the same
nitrogen atom this type of model is called the Bohr model named after the physicist Niels Bohr other models do exist which are more accurate but when first being introduced to chemistry the Bohr model is the easiest to make sense of and so it's what we will be using here in the center of a nitrogen atom we have the nucleus looking over at the scan you might think that the red section is the nucleus that's actually not the case as mentioned the colors here are artificial the red pixels are just the part of the electron cloud
that's closest to us the nucleus is hiding underneath the electrons it is the core of the atom and in our model the nucleus has been dramatically enlarged so that we can actually see it if the model were actually drawn more to scale the entire nucleus would be smaller than single pixel on your screen in fact if we were to enlarge the atom to the size of a professional soccer field well actually the size of 10 professional soccer fields the nucleus would be about the size of a house spider the nucleus consists of one or more
protons and in most atoms a collection of neutrons protons and neutrons are what give the atom most of its weight or its mass technically for example a Gold atom has 79 protons and typically 118 neutrons this is far heavier than a nitrogen atom which only has 7 protons and usually seven neutrons the number of neutrons and a particular type of atom might vary between individuals for example while most nitrogen atoms have 7 neutrons some have just 6 while others have 8 changing the number of neutrons inside of an atom won't really do much to change
its chemical properties instead it will often just make the atom slightly heavier slightly lighter or sometimes it will make the atom unstable on the other hand if you were to add or subtract just a single proton from nitrogen assuming you had the technology to do so you would completely change its chemical properties so much in fact that we would no longer call it nitrogen adding just a single proton to a nitrogen atom would transform it into an oxygen atom taking a proton away from nitrogen would transform it into carbon in other words the number of
protons an atom contains determines the type of atom it is when you look at the periodic table you find that each element has a number hydrogen is number one nitrogen is number seven Gold is number 79 this number tells you how many protons a single atom of that element contains protons are positively charged neutrons are neutral obviously they don't actually have little faces on them but it helps to remember electrons on the other hand are negatively charged we often depict them as little particles in orbit around the nucleus similar to planets orbiting a Sun but
this is not technically accurate scientists tell us that electrons can be best described as wave functions cloud like structures that sort of resemble the energy force fields you might find in a science-fiction movie that said for our purposes today the simplified model actually works best in general the number of electrons and atom contains is equal to the number of protons and its nucleus this is because each positively charged proton attracts one negatively charged electron through chemical reactions however an electron can sometimes be stripped away from an atom or an extra electron can sometimes be added
in these cases we call the modified atom an ion okay that was a lot of information thrown at you in a very short amount of time so let's just recap here and summarize the most important bits what exactly our atoms made of in the center of an atom we find one or more protons and in most cases we also find neutrons protons are positively charged neutrons are neutral the number of protons and atom contains determine the type of atom it is hydrogen has one proton nitrogen has seven Gold has 79 and so on orbiting about
the nucleus we find negatively charged electrons in general the number of electrons and atom contains is equal to the number of protons and its nucleus this is because each positively charged proton attracts one negatively charged electron I am John Perry and that was a basic overview of the anatomy of an atom stated clearly this animation series was made possible with a grant from the National Science Foundation and the Casal Research Center at the University of California Irvine Castle researchers are the ones that took that really cool image of nitrogen that I showed you and a
bunch of other images I'll show you in future videos aside from taking pictures of atoms and molecules the researchers at Castle also produced a free video game called bond breaker which teaches players how atoms and subatomic particles interact with one another though it is a fairly simple game I have found it extremely helpful when trying to make sense of the strange properties that atoms and subatomic particles possess I highly recommend checking it out a link to the game is displayed here on screen and can also be found in the video description this video was of
course also funded by good people like you who support my work on patreon.com forward slash stated clearly thank you folks you are amazing so long for now everybody stay curious also you should probably subscribe to this YouTube channel and maybe if you feel like it you can buy a t-shirt there's links below the video you
