• Question: what are protons and neutrons?

    Asked by saffronelliott to Paul on 23 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Paul Stevenson

      Paul Stevenson answered on 23 Mar 2010:


      If you take anything at all – any kind of matter, and break it up into smaller and smaller pieces you will get eventually to the basic building blocks. Take, for example, water. As you might know, water has a chemical formula H2O. This means that when you have split water up into its tiniest bit (a water molecule), each bit contains two Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom. You can then split this water molecule into the separate atoms. It was thought that these atoms were then the tiniest indivisible parts of matter, but actually each atom can be spilt up further It turns out that all atoms (no matter the element, be it oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, gold, lead etc…) are made from just three things – protons and neutrons, which are tiny particles that cluster together to make nuclei and electrons which orbit round the nuclei like planets around the sun.

      Does that answer you? Feel free to comment with more questions

Comments