Atomic structure
By: Patel Tirth
Looking inside the atom
Atoms are the building blocks of all matter
Atoms have a tiny, dense, positively charged
nucleus at their center, with negatively
charged electrons orbiting around the nucleus
The radius of the nucleus is over 10,000 times
smaller than the whole atom, but it contains
almost all the mass of the atom
Parts of the atoms
• The nucleus contains:
Protons- positively charged particle with a
relative atomic mass of one unit
Neutrons- no charge and with a relative atomic
mass of one unit
• Almost all the atoms is an empty space, but
moving around the nucleus there are:
Electrons – negative charge with almost
no mass (1/2000 the mass of a proton
or neutron)
Alpha-particle
• Evidence for the structure of the atom was discovered by
Ernest Rutherford in the beginning of the 20 th century from the
study of α-particle scattering
scattering and the • The experimental setup consists of alpha particles
fired at thin gold foil and a detector on the other
nucleus side to detect how many particles deflected at
different angle
What did the alpha particle
scattering experiment show
• The Rutherford alpha particle scattering experiment showed that:
• The majority of α-particles went straight through (A)
This suggested the atom is mainly empty space
• Some α-particles deflected through small angles of <
10o (B)
This suggested there is a positive nucleus at the center
(since two positive charges would repel)
• Only a small number of α-particles deflected straight back
at angles of > 90o (C)
This suggested the nucleus is extremely small and this
is where the mass and charge of the atom is
concentrated
It was therefore concluded that atoms consist of small
dense positively charged nuclei
A simple model of the atom
• After Rutherford had presented his findings, the
nuclear model of the atom gained rapid acceptance.
This was partly because it helped chemists to explain
the phenomenon of chemical bonding (the way in
which atoms bond together to form molecules).
Subsequently, the proton was discovered. It had a
positive charge, equal and opposite to that of the
electron. However, its mass was too small to account
for the entire mass of the atom, and it was not until
the early 1930s that this puzzle was solved by the
discovery of the neutron, an uncharged particle with a
similar mass to that of the proton.
• Protons and neutrons make up the nucleus of the
atom.
• The electrons move around the nucleus in a cloud,
some closer to and some further from the center of
the nucleus.
The scale of things
• It is useful to have an idea of the approximate sizes of typical particles:
• radius of proton ~ radius of neutron ~ 10^−15 m
• radius of nucleus ~ 10^−15 m to 10^−14 m
• radius of atom ~ 10^−10 m
• size of molecule ~ 10^−10 m to 10^−6 m.
• (Some molecules, such as large protein molecules, are very large indeed – compared to
an atom!) The radii of nuclear particles are often quoted in femtometers (fm), where 1
fm = 10^−15 m.
Nucleus and electrons
All nuclei, except the lightest form of hydrogen, contain protons and neutrons, and each nucleus is described by
the number of protons and neutrons that it contains.
Protons and neutrons in a nucleus are collectively called nucleons. For example, in a nucleus of gold, there are
79 protons and 118 neutrons, giving a total of 197 nucleons altogether.
The total number of nucleons in a nucleus is called the nucleon number (or mass number) A.
The nucleon number is the sum of the number of neutrons and protons in the nucleus, or A = N +Z (where A =
nucleon number, N = neutron number and Z = proton number)
The unit used to measure masses at this level is the unified atomic mass unit (u).
1 u is defined as being one-twelfth of the mass of a carbon-12 atom.
An isolated proton has a mass of 1.007 276 466 77 u and an isolated neutron has a mass 1.008 665 u. You can
see that there is a discrepancy between the sum of the masses of the protons and neutrons in a carbon-12
atom and the sum of the masses of six isolated protons and six isolated neutrons.
Isotopes
• Although atoms of the same element may be identical chemically, their nuclei
may be slightly different. The number of protons in the nucleus of an atom
determines what element it is: helium always has two protons, carbon six
protons, oxygen eight protons, neon 10 protons, radium 88 protons, uranium
92 protons and so on.
• However, the number of neutrons in the nuclei for a given element can vary.
Take neon as an example. Three different naturally occurring forms of neon are:
• The first has 10 neutrons in the nucleus, the second 11 neutrons and the third
12 neutrons. These three types of neon nuclei are called isotopes of neon. Each
isotope has the same number of protons (for neon this is 10) but a different
number of neutrons.