Posts Tagged ‘atoms’

Passion project

Hi guys!! In school, we are doing one of the final projects of the year. It’s called a passion project. You get to choose anything, from Piccaso to mars, and do a big presentation about it! You can do a gallery, slideshow, ted talk, poster, posters, or really anything you want!!!!

I’m doing the basics of Atoms in a ted talk. Why you may ask? Okay, I thought it would be cool to do something more science like and something I knew nothing about. Do you want to see the script for my ted talk? Here it is:

Everything in the world, your clothes, the food you ate yesterday, you, as in you watching this ted talk, my wonderful teacher, my wonderful teacher’s cat, all of us, abiotic and biotic, we all are made of the same thing. It’s an atom. A-T-O-M.  Tiny little circles that make up everything.

99.99999999999% of an atom is empty space, and they are 100 picometers long, otherwise known as a ten billionth of a meter. In the center of the atom there is the nucleus. It’s made up of two nucleons, particles. First off there are Neutrons. Neutrons have no charge, none at all. They are also pretty big. They are ALWAYS in the nucleus, and there are usually many of them. So, to determine the number of neutrons in atom, you only have to subtract the number of protons from the mass number. (the mass of an atom of a chemical element expressed in atomic mass units). Each atom has a similar number of neutrons. Neutrons were discovered in 1932, by James Chadwick. These are very important and a atom wouldn’t be an atom without a Neutron.

Then there are protons, Protons are also nucleons, and they were discovered in 1920, by Ernest Rutherford. Protons are bonded (held together) to Neutrons by a force called the nuclear force. This force is SUPERSTRONG, and is SUPERHARD to break. Also, protons have a positive charge, a positive charge of ONE. (from the charge of the quarks that make up nucleons). They are pretty huge, about the same size as a neutrons, and also like neutrons, are critical to the atom, and no atom, not copper, not oxygen, not carbon, no atom in the periodic table is complete without a proton. I should actually say nucleon, because it’s also true that no element has 0 neutrons ether.

Then there are electrons, and they have a negative charge. Electrons were discovered in the year 1897, by someone named J.J Thomson. They are tiny, WAY tinier than a proton or neutron, and they are not nucleons. Yep, I said it, they are definitely not nucleons. They go around the atom on orbitals, 1s, 2s, 2p, and 3s. These “orbitals” are made from the density of the one or more electrons that spin around the nucleus.  The electromagnetic force causes this spinning to happen. Lemme tell you about it. Since protons have a positive charge, and electrons have a negative charge, they attract and repel each other, creating the spinning. The spinning, is ULTRAFAST, 1/137 of the speed of light! Which for your information, is WAY faster than the speed of sound. So the atoms in you are orbiting faster than my words are reaching your ear. Isn’t that  super neat?

Atoms are VERYIMPORTANT and VERYCRITICAL to our existence. Every type of atom, whether it’s helium or carbon is important, very important. As I speak, Scientists are discovering more atoms and more materials. But they aren’t going as fast as they can. They need, WE NEED more people to help find more types of atoms and unlock more parts of the physics world. Elements are waiting for you to discover. I hope you learned something, because this is important, and it’s not going fast enough, and someone needs to step up and do something, if anyone, it’s YOU!

I really hope you didn’t find that boring. Anyways, thats it.