ATOMS!

Atoms are everywhere, we just cant see them.  There in our food, our drinks, there even in us!  In about 1802 a guy named John Dalton built a  model called the atomic theory of matter which means that each type of matter is made up of one type of atom.  Then each atom could be put into a group called an element and each atom was identical.  An example of that would be that gold atoms make gold and iron atoms make iron.  Dalton also said that an atom could not be created, made into smaller parts, or destroyed. 

                         

In 1897 a guy named J.J Thomson found the electron.  He used a device he created that had a vacuum tube with two medal plates at each end.  He found that a beam would form between the plates and he called this beam the cathode and the anode.  When you put a magnet near the beam it would cause it to bend and this mean that the particles of the beam were electrically charged.  Thomson discovered that the beam was made of negatively charged particles and they were later called electrons.  If there were the same number of protons and electrons then they would cancel each other out.  If electrons leave then the atom becomes positively charged, but if more electrons come then the atom becomes negatively charged.  When the electrons come or leave the atom becomes and ion because of its either positive or negative charges.  Thomson thought that electrons were stuck throughout a positively charged area.  For example everyone knows what cookie dough is right? Well the electrons are the chocolate chips and the dough is the positively charged area. 

There was one more guy I wanted to talk about.  His name is Ernest Rutherford and he made a device that had a beam and a thin sheet of gold plate.  They shot the beam and most of the particles went through the gold.  He found out that the gold had to be made up of mostly empty space.  When the other parts of the beam didn't go through he changed his theory saying that there had to be some positive particles in the gold.  He called this the nucleus and the particles inside the nucleus were the protons.  The electrons were the other particles spinning around it really fast.  Well of course there's so much more to tell but then I would have to get into the more scientific terms and you would all get bored.  Hope you learned a lot.