In class we've been learning about the subatomic particles that make up atoms: protons, neutrons, and electrons. This week we read a a series of comics about subatomic particles and their positive, negative, or neutral charges. It is important to learn about subatomic particles because they make up atoms and atoms make up everything in the world around us.
In the first comic I read, the two characters, Bill and Tim discussed what an atom and its components are. Bill defines an atom as "the smallest component of an element." The comic describes an isotope as the same element with different mass. An example of an isotope is a carbon atom with an atomic number of 6 and a mass of 12 and a carbon atom with an atomic number of 6 and a mass of 10. The comic also stated that the subatomic particles that make up most of the mass of an atom are the protons and neutrons, and the subatomic particles that make up most of the volume are the electrons.
The second comic discussed the components that make up the human body. The four main elements inside us are oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. There are also smaller amounts of calcium, phosphorous, and iron inside your body. If you removed all the empty space within all the atoms inside your body, what remained would be smaller than a grain of sand. All this shows that the human body is mostly empty space, water, and a few other different elements.
The third article talked about how electrons cause static electricity by switching between two atoms. You can harness static electricity by rubbing atoms together, for example such as when your rub your feet against the rug. This makes you negatively charged, so when you next touch someone, they feel a tiny electric shock. This happened in the Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons stations lab we did in class - I negatively charged myself and a piece of plastic by rubbing the plastic against my hand.
The above comic shows the two atoms talking after an electron switches from one atom to another, negatively charging the latter. The atom that lost the electron says to another "I'm positive!" because it's no longer negatively charged.
