Atoms: The Smallest Things Ever

We’re going to shed some light on the world’s tiniest thing, but before we do that, we’re going to have to shink down...

Here, not even a microscope can detect us. If you were to shink to this size, what you would see is this huge blue area, similar to space. The ’stars’ would actually be atoms a long way away - so far away they look white.

What you would notice about an atom is that they have about 5 yellow rings (like the picture on the right) and 3 smaller white ones. Orbiting these are electrons, which generate electricity when going at speed. If you make them hop from atom to atom, this  would generate an electric current and power the generator, but that is not what this article is about.

Atoms are made of three things: protons, neutrons and electrons. If one was to be taken away, the atom would collapse to the ground. If a few million atoms collapsed, the object would be unstabalised.

There are also different types of atom, with different amounts of protons, neutrons and electrons. For example, a hydrogen atom has only one neutron. Gold atoms have 79 protons, 79 electrons and 118 neutrons in the centre.

Atoms get more complicated as they go on. The biggest atom, Ognassion (Og) has 118 protons. The reason why it is complicated is that the number of neutrons varies, so you never know if you see one.

So now you know about atoms, go and impress your friends (not in real life, CORONAVIRUS!!) about all your knowledge of atoms. They’ll be dumbstruck!