What is the size of an atom? Detailed answer

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What is the size of an atom? Detailed answer

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What is the size of an atom?

Let's start with the fact that our knowledge of the atom today may change tomorrow. With the advent of synchrophasotrons, scientists are constantly gaining more and more information about the atom.

Interestingly, the word "atom" in Greek meant "indivisible". The ancient Greeks considered the atom to be the smallest component of any matter.

Today, more than 20 different particles that make up an atom have been discovered! According to scientists, an atom consists of electrons, protons, neutrons, positrons, neutrinos, mesons and hyperons. Electrons are negatively charged particles. The proton, which is about 1836 times heavier than the electron, is positively charged. The heavier particle, the neutron, is neutral. A positron, roughly equal to an electron, is also positively charged. A neutrino is about two thousand times smaller than an electron and has no charge. Mesons can be charged positively or negatively. Hyperons are larger than protons.

How all these particles, or charges, are arranged together is still unknown. Various chemical elements are made up of such atoms. Some differ in weight, so chemical elements are grouped by atomic weight. For example, hydrogen is number 1 in such a table, and iron is number 55. This means that an iron atom is 55 times heavier than a hydrogen atom. However, their weight is extremely small. One hydrogen atom weighs only one million-million-million-millionth of a gram! To imagine how small atoms are, consider how many atoms there are in one gram of hydrogen - that's the number "six" followed by 23 zeros. If you start counting them - one per second - it will take ten thousand million million years to count all the atoms in one gram of hydrogen!

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

Why are some of Euler's discoveries named after other scientists?

Leonhard Euler made a huge number of discoveries. A large number of physical and mathematical objects are named in his honor, and more than once: there are several Euler formulas, Euler equations, Euler theorems, Euler numbers. To avoid too much ambiguity, some of these discoveries and theorems are named after the scientists who first made or proved them after Euler.

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The main mission of New Horizons has already been completed. It culminated in a flyby of the Pluto-Charon system at a distance of 12 km from the planet's surface on July 500 of this year.

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