Learn Chemistry: The Structure of Atom

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Previously we have gone through the basic concepts of element, compound, atom & molecule at Element VS Compound (click to read, if you havn't). We have seen how fishballs and atoms can be used interchangeably. Now, we continue further with our fishballs story here.

Fishballs are basically a mixture of the flesh of fish, flour, salts and etc.

Atoms have their own ingredients as well. They are made up of protons, electrons & neutrons.

From the diagram above, we can see that protons and neutrons stay close together in the nucleus, while electrons are spinning fast and travel around the nucleus in their own orbitals.

Different fishballs have different flavor, i.e. cheezy, vege, curry, black pepper… Same thing goes with atoms: Different atoms have different amount of protons, electrons and neutrons. For example:

You may ask this question in your mind, “How do we know the exact number of protons, electrons and neutrons for a certain type of element?” In this case, chemists often refer to a chart called PERIODIC TABLE.

In the periodic table, the uranium element is depicted in this way:

Some reference books refer proton number as atomic number & nucleon number as mass number.

Test youself with more examples at Dynamic Periodic Table

Element VS Compound

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Posted by Learn Chemistry | Posted in SPM Chemistry , The Structure of Atom

"CHEMISTRY is the study of MATTER!!!" Most of the high school chemistry teachers tell this to their students in the first class. While continue listening to your teacher and flipping through the pages in your textbook, you'll read this:

This is so boring...

If you find difficulties in understanding what element, compound, atom & molecule are, do not worry. Many people have trouble understanding the things that they cannot see.

Let's just try to replace atoms with fishballs & see what will happen