Learning about the Atom!

Today we are looking at an atom! The atom is the smallest building block of all matter! The atom is made of three important pieces:

Protons- a positively charged particle found in the nucleus.

Neutrons- a neutral particle that makes up much of the mass in the nucleus.

Electrons- a negatively charge particle found orbiting the nucleus. They are much smaller than protons or neutrons.

When two or more atoms join together they can form molecules that build everything in our lives, for example, water is H20- 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen.

We created models of an atom using chairs and balloons representing the nucleus and students as electrons orbiting the nucleus.

In order to help students better understand just how tiny an atom is, we watched this video clip:

We discussed how scientists use models to explain what an atom looks like and that over time as we continue to learn about the atom we change what our models look like. We still aren't 100% certain that the model we have now is the exact model of an atom. Here are some of the models we have used over time: