Atoms make up everything, but what makes up atoms? Protons, electrons and neutrons.
There are a 118 different kinds of atoms which are each
the smallest part of an element If we observe elements like gold, carbon, and
oxygen we can see that they have very different properties that don't look or
act the same. But why are they so different? Well it comes down to what's
inside their atoms. As you can see here atoms are made of just three types of
tiny particles called protons, electrons, and neutrons, and each of these tiny
particles does something special. For example, it's the number of protons
inside an atom that makes each element different. If we look at the periodic
table the first element hydrogen has one proton.
The second element helium has two protons, and the third element lithium
has three protons. This goes on all the way up to the hundred and eighteenth
element Oganesson, which has... that's right a hundred and eighteen protons in
its nucleus. By the way the number of protons in an atom is also called its
atomic number, which you can see here on the periodic table of elements
now electrons are much smaller than protons, and they zip around protons at
lightning speed, making up something called an electron
cloud around the atom. Electrons do this because they have a negative electrical
charge, which always pulls towards the protons positive electrical charge. This
pull between the positive protons and the negative electrons is called the
electric force, and it's always there. so whenever a free electron gets close
enough to a lonely proton -zap- they'll become part of the same atom. That's why
all the (stable) elements have the same number of electrons and protons.
So why do atoms need neutrons? Well without neutrons the electric force will cause
the positively charged protons to push each other out of the atom. But there's a
stronger force that exists between neutrons and protons, which stops the
protons from flying apart. It's called the strong nuclear force, or strong force
for short, and it kind of works like glue to hold the nucleus together. If there
were no neutrons everything would simply be hydrogen.