<<The series of articles is going to be about the universe, and the what it is made up of and how old it is. It will also talk about things such as black holes and stars.
Many people have never had a chance to look at the universe as a whole entity before. They believe their world only exists within themselves, inside their homes, or on their laptop screen. However, if you are willing to open your eyes for long enough you will realize that we live in an extremely vast place surrounded by trillions of other galaxies just like our own with billions of suns shining light upon them all day long.>>
Nuclei are the building blocks of atoms, specifically the particles that make up the nucleus. These particles, called protons and neutrons, have a very specific number of electrons orbiting them which makes the atom stable. Atoms with too many electrons or too few electrons are unstable and can react in an uncontrolled way. The electrons orbit these particles in order to balance out their masses; without this balance they would not exist as atoms and would be pulled apart by gravity due to their different masses. Protons and neutrons are not the only components of the atom, though. A second particle, called a neutron, is created by a proton and an anti-proton colliding. In fact, all atoms made up of protons will have three particles: one proton (positive charge), one neutron (negative charge), and an electron (neglecting for now the positron). This picture shows how this atom is made up of atoms; once we add electrons our picture would look very similar because all atoms have three parts, but today we will make this simple to understand.
An atom is made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons in a specific arrangement. The protons and neutrons make up the nucleus while electrons orbit around the nucleus. These are called orbits. The number of orbits that surround a particle changes depending on the charge of the particle. The proton has a positive charge while the neutron has a negative charge so if we add them together they will form neutral particles, like a hydrogen atom which has one proton and one neutron. This gives us the definition of a proton, neutron, and electron.
The basic atom is made up of two protons and one neutrons. The hydrogen atom is only one particle so it is not composed of other atoms. Two hydrogen atoms make a helium atom because the two extra electrons are needed to balance out the positive charge on the nucleus. Two helium atoms make an oxygen atom with eight particles total in the nucleus and eight electrons orbiting and three protons total. This is just to show how adding an extra proton adds an additional particle (the neutron) which adds an additional orbit which results in extra electrons around the nucleus, making it more positively charged.
The speed of an electron is what determines its orbit. An electron orbiting at a higher speed will be further away from the nucleus because it has to move faster to maintain that orbit. Protons and neutrons are both slow so they have an equal number of electrons circling them. As we continue to add more particles to the nucleus it does not take very many electrons to make up the charge difference so if we add more hydrogen atoms or helium atoms, they will always have one extra particle in the nucleus making them stable as well. That means that even white dwarf stars can be stable; no matter how many electrons they are made up of, there are still enough protons and neutrons for stability.
The first stable atom was the hydrogen atom and the first element to be discovered was hydrogen. The atomic number, the number of protons in a nucleus, is given by taking the smallest number of protons in a particular element (hydrogen has one proton) and adding that to 1. For example, carbon has six protons in its nucleus so its atomic number is 6. Hydrogen would make up an atom with zero protons so it would also have zero atomic numbers.
Atoms can also be broken up into three main groups: neutral, ionic, and covalent. When we were discussing the atom it was assumed that the atom is a neutral atom because it has no charge. If an atom has a charge then electrons are being pulled from one side of the nucleus to another side of the nucleus creating a difference in charges. To determine which category an atom falls under, we have to look at both the electrons and protons radiating out from this nucleus. Since we already determined that every element has protons and neutrons, if an element is ionic then there must be more protons than electrons or vice versa. A covalent bond occurs when there are equal amounts of protons and electrons leaving the atom neutral. The most common example of an ionic bond is with sodium and chlorine. Sodium does not have a charge but chlorine does because it has more electrons than protons. Taking away one electron from the chlorine atom gives it a positive charge which results in the sodium atom becoming negatively charged due to its additional proton. When these two different atoms come into proximity with each other they are pulled together by this electrostatic force. The negative charge on the sodium pushes positively charged electrons towards the positive electron cloud surrounding chlorine making the chlorine positively charged as well. These two molecules have formed an ionic bond; they are now called NaCl, or salt. An ionic bond is a lot stronger than a covalent bond because the electrons are stuck to one side of the nucleus.
The simplest way to organize ions is by electronegativity. This is determined by the amount of energy needed to break apart an atom into its individual particles and the number of ions formed when this occurs. The greater the electronegativity, the more negative an ion is and vice versa. An ion that has oxygen as its donor atom will have higher electronegativity than if it were made with fluorine atoms as its donor atoms. This makes sodium fluoride less likely than sodium chloride to breakdown into smaller ions because oxygen has such a high electronegativity compared to chlorine and fluorine.