PracticalStudent.com
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Metalwork - Materials - Atomic StructureAtoms... what are they? Well they're small, that's for sure,
but they are so important ! Someone has said to you at some
stage, 'dot your i's and cross your t's... it's not hard !'.
Well every dot on an 'i' has aproximatly a million, million,
million atoms in it, ... that's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
atoms ! (Who bothered counting ?!) They are so small that
they cannot be seen by the naked eye. It takes some very special
equipment in order to prove that they exist.
In ancient Greek philosophy the word 'atom' was used to describe
the smallest piece of matter that could be concieved. It wasn't
until the 1890's that major advances were made in the field
of Atomic Theory when a man called J.J. Thomson discovered
that the Atoms themselves could be broken into smaller parts.
An Atom is now defined as the smallest part of an Element that retains the properties of the Element. Atoms are the
building blocks that make up all matter.
What is an Atom made of ?Again just to make sure that you know, an Atom is the smallest part of an Element that retains the properties of the Element. It was originally thought that an Atom could not be divided into smaller parts. Then around the 1890's, J.J. Thomson discovered Electrons and this led to more detailed studies on Atoms.
It is interesting to note that most of an Atom is made up of empty space. Relatively speaking the distance between the Electron and the Nucleus is approximately the same as the distance between the Moon and the Earth. Remember I said 'relatively'.
Electrons have a negative charge. The total charge of the Electrons in regular Atoms equals the total charge of the Protons, therefore a regular atom is neutral in charge. If you would like to know more about Atoms that do not have an equal number of Electrons and Protons you want to read about Chemical Bonding, where we look at Atoms that have lost or gained Electrons. It is now believed that there are even smaller parts called Quarks inside the Nucleus of the Atom, but technology is not yet sufficiently advanced to find this out for sure. Electronic ConfigurationUnderstanding the Electronic Configuration of Atoms is very helpfull when you wish to understand Chemical Bonding. The Electrons which whizz around the Nucleus of an Atom do not do so totally randomly. They fit into different levels which are called Shells, and only a limited number of Electrons are allowed in each Shell.
If you remember the diagram of the Hydrogen Atom near the
top of the page, it had only one Electron and it was situated
in the first Shell. It is important to remember that there
is a limit on the number of Electrons in each Shell. When
a Shell is full the Electrons move to the next outermost Shell. Atomic NumberThe Atomic Number of an Element gives us three pieces of
information. Firstly it gives us the Elements position in Periodic Table Of The Elements.
Secondly it gives us the number of Protons and thirdly the
number of Electrons. If you remember we already said that
there were an equal number of Protons and Electrons in every
Atom. Atomic MassBecause Electrons, Protons and Neutrons are so small it would
be impractical to measure their mass in normal units. As a
result a scale unit called the Atomic Mass Unit or amu for short is used. This scale is based on the Carbon
Atom which is taken to have an amu of 12. Electrons are much
smaller then the Protons and Neutrons, (they have a mass of
1/1840 amu), therefore they are not taken into account when
measuring the mass of an Atom. The mass of an Atom is the
mass of the Protons plus the mass of the Neutrons, and both
have a mass of 1 amu. So now you should know as much as you need to know about
Atoms for Metalwork. A good idea would be to give The
Periodic Table Of The Elements a good looking at. You
should be familiar with at least the first 20 Elements and
it is always handy to know the metals... after all that's
what you're here for !
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