Question: How many atomis are in a partical

Hayley Smith answered on 17 Nov 2011:

Hi lyle

Great question!

I’ll try my best to give you a good explanation…

Everything (absolutely everything) around us is made of things called atoms. The Ancient Greeks used this word “atom” to describe the smallest amount of something they could imagine, and that’s about right.

A particle, however, is a term that people use more generally and it can really mean many different things – so it’s hard to say how many atoms there are in a particle…

For example, you may say “a particle of dust”, this is probably made of many thousands of atoms.
Or, some people may just say “a particle” and by this they may mean just one atom.

So it’s kind of difficult to say…

What I will say though, is that although the Ancient Greeks did well in describing atoms, people have since found out that the atom *is* in fact made of smaller things, and these smaller things are called protons, neutrons and electrons.

The protons and the neutrons sit together in the centre of an atom, and the electrons whizz around the outside.

And it’s impressive to think how small these atoms are, there’s about
78 000 000 000 000 000 000 atoms, in just one grain of sand – that’s pretty impressive, right?

Hope that’s been some kind of help? Comment back if you have any further questions or want anything explaining more!

Thanks again for a great question

Hayley 🙂