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Discover the tiny building blocks called atoms that are too small to see but make up everything.
If you took a piece of aluminum foil and kept cutting it in half forever, would you eventually run out of foil, or could you keep cutting for eternity?
Everything you see, touch, and smell is made of matter. Your desk, your favorite snack, the water you drink, and even the air you breathe are all matter. But if you could zoom in millions of times, you would see that matter is built from tiny 'bricks' called atoms. Atoms are so small that they are invisible to our eyes. They are the basic building blocks of the entire universe! Just like a giant LEGO castle is made of tiny individual bricks, the whole world is made of these tiny atoms. There are many different types of atoms, and how they group together determines if they make up a solid rock, a liquid juice, or a gas like oxygen.
Think about the tiny period at the end of this sentence. It looks very small, right? 1. Look closely at a printed period (.). 2. Even though it is tiny, it is actually huge compared to an atom. 3. Scientists estimate that about (ten million) atoms could fit inside that single tiny dot!
Quick Check
What is the name of the tiny 'building blocks' that make up all the matter in the universe?
Answer
Atoms
Let's look at the thickness of a single strand of hair: 1. Pluck a single hair and look at its width. 2. A hair is about atoms wide. 3. If you wanted to count every atom across the width of that hair, and you counted one atom every second, it would take you almost 6 days of non-stop counting!
Quick Check
If an atom were the size of a marble, how big would an apple be?
Answer
The size of the entire Earth.
An element is a pure substance that is made of only one specific kind of atom. Think of it like a flavor of ice cream. If you have a bar of pure gold, it is made of only gold atoms. If you have a tank of pure oxygen, it is made of only oxygen atoms. An atom is the smallest possible piece of an element that still acts like that element. If you have one atom of gold, it still 'behaves' like gold. But if you tried to break that gold atom apart, it would no longer be gold! There are over 100 different elements, which means there are over 100 different types of atoms that make up everything we know.
Atoms often like to hang out in groups. When atoms join together, they create something new: 1. Take two Hydrogen atoms (). 2. Add one Oxygen atom (). 3. When they snap together like magnets, they form a molecule of water (). 4. Even though water looks like one thing, it is actually trillions of these tiny atom groups moving together!
What is an atom?
If you have a piece of the element Silver, what kind of atoms is it made of?
True or False: Atoms are large enough to see with a magnifying glass.
Review Tomorrow
In 24 hours, try to explain to a friend why an apple is like the Earth when talking about atoms.
Practice Activity
Look around your room and pick three objects (like a toy, a glass of water, and a balloon). Remind yourself that each one is made of trillions of tiny atoms!