INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT ATOMS
The word “ATOM” comes from the Greek word “ATOMOS” which
means “indivisible”, i.e., it can’t be cut further and it was named by
“DEMOCRITUS”.
Early scientists and philosophers of India knew about the
existence of atoms.
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| Acharya Kannad knew about atomic concept |
In 1661, Robert Boyle, first published the theory that all
matter was composed of atoms.
The most spread atom in the observable universe is “Hydrogen”
atom. Nearly 74% of the atoms in the Milky Way galaxy are hydrogen atoms.
The first new atom made by human was “Technetium” which has
43 protons.
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| Technetium |
There might be 200 or, more sub-atomic particles. Some of
them we already know about neutrons, electrons, protons, quarks, gluons,
neutrinos etc. but some others are still waiting to be discovered.
Every year our body replaces about 98% of its atom. Now,
please go and stand-up in front of your mirror and ask yourself “Who am I? “
Every atom of our body is once a part of a star. So you can
call yourself as “STAR DUST”.
A single human hair is as thick as 500,000 carbon atoms stacked
over each other.
If you have a string of 70 million helium atoms then the
size of the string will be less than a centimeter.
There are more atoms in a single grain of sand than grains
of sand on the earth.
99.94% of the mass of an atom is contained by the nucleus
only.
If the size of an atom is increased to a size of a small
marble then the size of our face will be as big as earth.
Electrons inside an atom travels roughly about a speed of 2,200
km/s and this speed is fast enough to go around the earth in just 18 seconds.
99.999999999999% of the volume of an atom is empty. (Do not
count , its twelve nines after the decimal point)
But, this empty space is filled by quantum fluctuation. Well,
it is a field that has potential energy and spontaneously dissolves and
rebuilds itself. These fluctuations have a fundamental impact on how charged particle
interacts with each other.
Every object has some
size because of this empty space only. If we remove the empty space from the
atoms then all the humans on the earth will fit in a tea spoon and the size of
our earth will shrink to a size of a baseball.
Neutron star is a celestial object which has such intense
conditions and contains the mass of three suns in a size which is only few
kilometers wide.
The atom looks something like this-
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| Atomic orbitals |
The light-dark shades are called as orbital where we can
find the electron.
Probability of finding the electron in the darker region is
more than the lighter region and as we move away from the shaded regions to
find the electron tends to zero but it never become exactly zero. So, there is
also a little possibility that one of the electrons of your body may be at mars
right now or, may be at sun or, may be outside our galaxy or, may be in some
other planet.
Particles like electrons can be considered as a zero
dimensional dots having wave like properties and they behave both like wave and
particle at the same time like light(Photons). This implies –
An electron can present in many places at the same time and
it can just disappear suddenly from one place to reappear at other place.
Electrons in the atom follow the uncertainty principle and
this means the more accurate you calculate the position of an electron; the
more error arises in the calculations of its velocity and vice versa.
By combining atoms we
can make any element and it may be gold, silver or, carbon. Just we have to add
and/or subtract some subatomic particles from the existing atom.
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