Objectives:
Define matter
Know the organization of the atom
Know and associate charges to different subatomic particles
Know what distinguishes different atoms
Be able to determine the amount of valence electrons an atom has
What is matter?
The term "matter" is often used, but what is its definition? Matter is actually defined as anything with both a mass and a volume. Some examples include, trees, water, the device you are using to view this website or even people. It seems that everything is matter, but that is not the case. Take gravity as an example. It has no mass and certainly does not have volume; you cannot fill a box with gravity! Gravity is thus not matter.
The composition of matter
All matter is made up of atoms, which are incredibly small and spherical. Even just a glass of water is made of an unimaginably large quantity of atoms. All that said, even atoms are made of different components. When zoomed into an atom, you see three main components: protons (in red), neutrons (in green) and electrons (in blue). These building blocks of atoms are called subatomic particles.
Something very important and interesting about these subatomic particles is that they each have an electric charge. A neutron, whose name contains the first few letters of "neutral", has a neutral charge (in other words, no charge), a proton has a positive charge and an electron has a negative charge.
Different atoms
Not all atoms are the same. This is simple to see as all the matter we see in our daily lives is not the same. So, what distinguishes different types of atoms? The amount of protons they have. You will find out why it not the amount of electrons or neutrons in a future lesson.
The organization of an atom
There is a large clump of subatomic particles (protons and neutrons) in the centre of an atom that is called the nucleus. Electrons orbit the nucleus on different rings. Something very interesting about these rings of electrons is the the one nearest to the nucleus has a maximum of two electrons and that rings after that have a maximum of eight. The furthest rings of electrons that an atom has is called the valence shell and knowing how many electrons an atom has on its valence shell is very important to knowing how it will react with others. To see some examples of this, check out the video!
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