QUESTION: Is an atom really hard to break? ANSWER: Not really — we can slice them, dice them, or smash them. Let me explain a little about an atom first, and you will know what I mean. The center of ...

Why did they form at that time? Astronomers know from observing distant exploding stars that the size of the universe has ...

When building an atom, pay close attention to the particles' electrical charges. Protons have a charge of +1. Electrons have a charge of -1. Neutrons are neutral, as its name implies. A stable atom ...

Part of Physics (Single Science) Unit 1: Atomic and nuclear physics Protons and neutrons are the heaviest particles in an atom and as a result they make up most of its mass. The mass of electrons is ...

The “lead” of a pencil is actually made of a substance called graphite which is made of carbon atoms. The picture shows a close-up of one carbon atom. A hydrogen atom has one proton as the nucleus and ...

Atoms can be more overweight than we thought, a team of scientists in the United States has discovered. They have sent atoms crashing into one another in a particle accelerator to create bloated ...

For four years, James Chadwick was a prisoner of war in Germany. When World War I ended, he returned to his native England to rejoin the mentor of his undergraduate days, Ernest Rutherford. Now head ...

MIT physicists developed a way to probe inside an atom’s nucleus, using the atom’s own electrons as “messengers” within a ...