You’ve learned some basic facts about the matter that makes up atoms, but it might be kind of hard to imagine how these invisible atoms actually form things we can actually see—a gold ring, say, or a glass of water. For starters, it’s important to know that some of the things we can see are made from just one type of atom, called elements, and others are made of different types of atoms that are connected together, called molecules.
This animation provides more information about the atom, and also defines and describes elements and molecules. Before you watch the animation, you may want to review the terms on Page 2—particularly the definitions for atom, matter, element, and molecule.
| Keyboard Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Pause/Play video playback |
| Enter | Pause/Play video playback |
| m | Mute/Unmute video volume |
| Up and Down arrows | Increase and decrease volume by 10% |
| Right and Left arrows | Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds |
| 0-9 | Fast seek to x% of the video. |
| f | Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key. |
| c | Press c to toggle captions on or off |
Matter is made up of atoms, but not all atoms are the same. There are atoms with more stuff inside (ex. carbons), and atoms with less stuff inside (hydrogen). All in all, there are 118 different types of atoms, determined by the arrangement and amount of the stuff inside.
And all matter is made up of combinations of these atoms--but there is a special kind of matter called elements that are substances made entirely of one type of atom-- so as you might imagine: 118 types of atoms mean there are 118 different elements. Gold, for example, is an element. If you break apart a piece of gold down to its smallest particles, you end of up with gold atoms- and only gold atoms.
And here is where it gets a tad tricky-- the term element refers to a substance made up of one type of atom (ie. gold), and it refers to a single atom of that element. So no matter how many gold atoms are contained in that chunk of gold-- 1 billion or just one, it is considered an element (gold) because it can’t be broken down to anything simpler.
And when atoms of one element connect with atoms of another element to form molecules, the true chemistry begins, and VOILA! the zillions of different types of living and nonliving things that we define as matter.