Physical Science L4

Structure of the Atom

OBJECTTIVES:

at the end of the lesson,you should be able to

1. Describe the nucleus

2. Differentiate between proton and an electron; and

3. State the characteristics of neutron

The Nucleus

The nucleus is found at the center of the atom. It is the core of an atom. Ninety-nine percent of the mass of the atom is located
in this core. Even though the nucleus is very massive, its size is 100 000 times smaller than the size of the atom. The two main
subparticles of the atom are found in the nucleus. They are the proton and the neutron. Moving around the nucleus are the
electron.

The Proton

The proton is a positively charged subparticle found in the nucleus of the atom. When Rutherford fired a stream of positive
alpha particles at a thin gold foil, almost all of the alpha particles passed through the foil, while only few were deflected and
bounced back because of the protons in the foil encountered by the same positively charged particles. Protons are positively
charged. They are all identical, regardless of the element in which they are found.

The Neutron

James Chadwick called neutrons because they were electrically neutral particles having mass lightly greater than that of
proton. Neutrons have no charge. They share nucleus with the protons. All neutrons are also identical. They are slightly massive
than a proton, but their mass is still considered as 1 a.m.u like the proton.

The Electron
Revolving rapidly outside the nucleus of an atom are negatively charged particles. Each particle has a mass of 0.000549 a.m.u.
in an atom, the number of positively charged proton is equal to the number of negatively charged electrons, so that the total
charge of an atom is zero and the atom is said to be neutral. The exact location of the electrons cannot be known. Only the
likelihood of finding an electron in a particular place can be determined. The space outside the nucleus is full of fuzzy blurry
cloud where electron is likely to be found.

How did the concept of atomic number lead to the synthesis of new elements in the laboratory?

In 1864, John Newlands, an English chemist noticed that elements were arrange according to increasing mass, every eighth
element would exhibit similar properties. He called this the Law of Octaves. However, beyond calcium, the law seemed
inadequate for the succeeding elements.

In 1869, a Russian chemist, Dmitri Mendeleev and a German chemist, Lothar Meyer independently propose much more
extensive tabulation of the elements based on periodic recurrence of the properties of elements. This phenomenon called
periodicity. Mendeleev’s classification system was a great improvement over Newlands. This system grouped the elements
together according to their properties of elements which were not yet discovered.

In 1913, a young English physicist, Henry Moseley discovered a correlation between what he called atomic number and the
frequency of X-rays generated by bombarding the elements with high energy electrons. He noticed that generally, the
frequency of emitted X rays increases with increasing atomic mass.

All atoms can be identified through the number of protons in their nucleus and the number of electrons that move around the
nucleus. The accepted way of denoting the atomic number is as follows.

Mass number

X
Z

Atomic number