• Question: What is the difference between an atom and a particle?

    Asked by anon-244291 to Ondrej, Jordan, Eleanor, Ed, Christine, Alice on 17 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Alice Morris

      Alice Morris answered on 17 Mar 2020:

      An atom is the smallest piece you can cut an element into where it remains that material. For example, if you take a block of gold and keep cutting it into smaller and smaller pieces, you’ll end up with an atom of gold.

      But if you break that atom down further, it’s no longer gold – instead it’s a collection of protons and neutrons and electrons. Then if you break the protons or neutrons down further you get quarks. Along with the electrons, we think we can’t break these particles down further at the energies we currently can access, so we call these “fundamental” particles.

    • Photo: Eleanor Jones

      Eleanor Jones answered on 18 Mar 2020:

      Great explanation, Alice 🙂

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