The Atom and

The Mole
By: Lilly Kane-Eames, Wyatt Clifford, and
Dacey Presnell
 Table of Contents
Created: 1/27/22
Chemistry 2021/2022

Suggested Reading Level: 4th Grade and Above

Chapter 1: The History of The Atom!……………………….1

Chapter 2: What are Atoms?............................................4

Chapter 3: What are Moles?............................................6

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Chapter 1 - The History of The Atom!

Empedocles, a Greek philosopher, had an idea!

Everything that is on the Earth has to fall under one of the
four elements: water, air, earth, or fire. Some things could
be made up of more than one element.
Democritus was a different Greek philosopher.
Democritus believed that if you cut a stone into smaller
pieces, there would be a point when you couldn’t cut the
stone into any smaller pieces. It would not be able to be
divided anymore. He called the really small pieces of
matter atomos, which meant indivisible. He thought that atomos could not be
destroyed.

Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist (a physicist is an

expert in physics - physics is a part of science about the
properties of nature, matter, and much more.) Niels Bohr
had a theory that electrons go around the nucleus in orbits
that are a set size and energy. A nucleus is positively
charged and is at the center of the atom. When the
electrons (negatively charged particles) are in orbit (they go
around the nucleus in oval shapes), the electron does not gain or lose any
energy. If it does jump to higher or lower energy, it is due to radiation (radiation is
energy that moves from one place to another.) The theory was similar to the
structure of the Solar System; a system that had a small nucleus surrounded by
orbiting electrons!
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John Dalton was an English chemist, physicist, and meteorologist (a chemist

is an expert in chemistry - chemistry is a part of science that identifies what
substances make up different matter. A
meteorologist is an expert in meteorology -
meteorology is a part of science that studies the
processes of the atmosphere as well as the
weather.) John Dalton’s theory is based on two
scientific laws. Those two laws are ‘the law of
conservation of mass’ and ‘the law of constant
composition’. The law of conservation of mass
says that if there is a chemical reaction of some
sort then the amount of each element must be the same. We also use this law
every time we balance equations. The law of constant composition says that a
pure mixture will have similar measurements of the same elements. Dalton
hypothesized that the two laws could be explained using the idea of atoms. He
proposed the idea that all matter is made up of atoms. Atoms make up every
element, but the atoms in each element were different! He also theorized that
chemical reactions do not destroy or create atoms, just rearrange them.

Ernest Rutherford was a British physicist who later became

known as the father of nuclear physics. He came up with the
Rutherford atomic model. The model was to show that electrons
that were negative, balanced the electrons that were positive.
This is shown by traveling in circular movements around the
nucleus. The Rutherford model was a “plum pudding” (a dessert
made of dried fruit and lots of sugar) atomic model. This meant that the positive
atom was
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like a plum in a pudding (the positive medium is like a pudding. The electrons are
like plums inside the pudding.)

J.J. Thomson was a British physicist. J.J. Thomson

had discovered the electron in 1897, that's a long time
ago! He was doing research with cathode rays, and
boom! He found electrons! At first, he called them
corpuscles, and they played a big role in changing what
we know about atomic structure! Usually, electrons are
bound to the positively charged atoms by the attraction
between opposite charges. However, in a neutral atom, the number of electrons
is identical to the number of positive charges on the nucleus. Any atom may have
more or fewer electrons than positive charges, in this case, the charged atoms
are called ions! Ever since Thomson discovered electrons, our knowledge about
the world has never been the same!

In 1903, Thompson had a wonderful idea about atoms.

He came up with a model that no one had ever thought of
before. Thompson thought that atoms consisted of positive
and negative charges. There's this device called a cathode
ray tube, and he used it to prove his idea! He proved that all
atoms contained tiny little negatively charged particles or electrons!
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Chapter 2 - What are Atoms?

Atoms are what make everything! There are a lot of atoms. But what is an
atom made of? There are these things called
electrons, neutrons, and protons. Electrons are
particles in an atom made up of negative energy.
Neutrons are particles in an atom made up of neutral
energy. Protons are particles in an atom made up of
positive energy. That's a lot of energy! But that's not
all. The picture is what an atom looks like. The red
circle is called the nucleus, which is made up of
neutrons and protons while the electrons circle around it. The number of protons
and neutrons are the same (because they make up the balanced nucleus!)

Electronegativity is a periodic trend that relates to

everything atom and periodic table! A periodic trend is a
pattern that is in the periodic table. Electronegativity
describes how an atom attracts electrons. There is no set
way to calculate this, but the most common way is using
the Pauling scale! This means that the energies are joined by a band that we
can’t see that is made by atoms!
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Atomic radius measures the size of atoms and

usually is the distance from the center of the atom to
the surrounding shell. The size of an atom is
determined by the electrons orbiting it. However, the
orbitals can be a bit fuzzy and unpredictable at times.
It is hard to give a good average number because it
changes so much. The number that scientists
eventually came up with is 0.01 nanometers. That’s so
small! A strand of hair is 100,000 nanometers thick, that’s so much bigger than
an atom and it’s only one strand of hair!
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Chapter 3 - What are Moles?

Moles are not what you think. It is not one of the dots you find on your arm or leg,
and it is not the small animal that digs underground. Even though both of those are
called moles, this type of mole is different.
This scientific mole is a little confusing, so
let’s take it a step at a time. A scientific mole
is a unit of measurement, which is basically a
number. This unit of measurement is 6.022 x
10^23. This is called Avogadro’s number
because Amedeo Avogadro discovered that
two gasses with the same volume have the
same number of molecules when both are
under the same amount of temperature and
pressure. Since molecules were so small and
there were so many of them, he would group
them together to make it easier to understand just how many there were. The name of
the grouped-together molecules was labeled as a mole. A mole of a substance is as
stated before; 6.022 x 10^23. The answer to this would be 602 sextillion atoms, or
602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. An example would involve water. If you
poured 18.01 grams of water into a cup, you would have one mole of water. That means
that 18.01 grams of water are made up of 602 sextillion atoms. To help understand how
many atoms are in a mole, it can be shown on a bigger scale. One Earth, there is only
3% of freshwater, but that is a total of 9.78 x 10^17 gallons of freshwater! That may be
hard to understand, but that is a lot!! One gallon of water is equal to 3,785 grams, and
there is a total of 3.701 x 10^21 grams of water on Earth. A mole has 602 sextillion
grams in this example, and there is a total of 2.228 x 10^45 moles of water on Earth.