• Question: what are atoms made up of

    Asked by jboyle to Sheila, Piyush, Natalia, Gary, Dimitar on 11 Nov 2018. This question was also asked by jimmymiton, bigballs2, calvinmc66.
    • Photo: Gary Munnelly

      Gary Munnelly answered on 11 Nov 2018:

      Atoms are typically described as being comprised of three different particles: protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons are positively charged, electrons are negatively charged and neutrons don’t have a charge. These subatomic particles are called “composite particles” because they are made up of even smaller particles called “elementary particles”.

      I don’t know very much about elementary particles I’m afraid, but they have some funny names like “quarks” (which sounds a bit like the noise a posh duck would make), “leptons” and “bosons”.

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