Hand-Held Atoms...

Have you ever held an atom in your hand? After all, we've been learning in Chemistry that atoms are the smallest particles of matter. So small in fact that we have to use models in order to understand their complex functions and structures.

What makes up an atom? How are they represented? What if some of the particles are different in number?  We've been studying the answers to ALL these questions and many more by doing a practical application of hand-held atoms...

This particular atom has protons (the red beads), neutron (the green beads), and electrons (the loose black beads). For neutral atoms the protons, neutrons, and electrons are all equal. There are some cases where their are differing numbers of neutrons which cause isotopes.

For this particular case study we looked at nine different "atoms", identifying each particular element represented by the atomic number and then counting the mass number, number of neutrons, and the number of electrons. We then took all of this information to write the isotopic notion for this element.

It's "Hands-On Learning" at its best!