Many centuries ago, people realized that any substance on earth consists of microscopic particles. Some time passed, and scientists proved that these particles really exist. They were called atoms. Usually atoms cannot exist separately and are combined into groups. These groups are called molecules.

The name “molecule” itself comes from the Latin word moles, meaning heaviness, block, bulk, and the diminutive suffix - cula. Previously, instead of this term, the word “corpuscle” was used, literally meaning “small body”. In order to find out what a molecule is, let's turn to explanatory dictionaries. Ushakov’s dictionary says that this is the smallest particle that can exist autonomously and has all the properties of the substance to which it belongs. Molecules and atoms are all around us, and although we can't touch them, all we really see are giant clumps of them.

Example with water

The best way to explain what a molecule is is to use the example of a glass of water. If you pour half of it, the taste, color and composition of the remaining water will not change. It would be strange to expect anything different. If you cast half again, the quantity will decrease, but the properties will again remain the same. Continuing in this manner, we will end up with a small droplet. It can still be divided with a pipette, but this process cannot be continued indefinitely.

Ultimately, you will end up with a tiny particle, the remainder of which will no longer be water. To get an idea of ​​what a molecule is and how small it is, try to guess how many molecules are in one drop of water. How do you think? Billion? One hundred billion? In fact, there are about a hundred sextillion of them. This is a number that has twenty-three zeros after the one. Such a magnitude is difficult to imagine, so let’s use a comparison: the size of one is smaller than a large apple by as many times as the apple itself is smaller. Therefore, it cannot be seen even with the most powerful optical microscope.

and atoms

As we already know, all microscopic particles, in turn, consist of atoms. Depending on their number, the orbits of the central atoms and the type of bonds, the geometric shape of the molecules can be different. For example, human DNA is twisted in the shape of a spiral, and the smallest particle of ordinary table salt looks like this: If several atoms are somehow taken from a molecule, its destruction will occur. At the same time, the latter will not go anywhere, but will become part of another microparticle.

After we have figured out what a molecule is, let's move on to the atom. Its structure is very similar to a planetary system: in the center there is a nucleus with neutrons and positively charged protons, and electrons revolve around it in different orbits. In general, the atom is electrically neutral. In other words, the number of electrons is equal to the number of protons.

We hope our article was useful, and now you no longer have questions about what a molecule and an atom are, how they are structured and how they differ.

How are atoms different?

Translated, “atom” means indivisible. It is named so because for a long time it was considered the smallest part of matter. But further development of science showed that this is not so. So, let's figure out what an atom is made of and how the atoms of different elements differ.

Atomic structure

Today, science knows 126 types of chemical elements. General plan the structure of their atoms is the same. Each has a nucleus of protons and neutrons around which electrons orbit. Electrons are negatively charged particles. When they rotate around the nucleus, they form electron cloud.

Protons are positively charged particles. At rest, an atom contains the same number of protons and electrons, so chemical element has no electrical charge. However, during reactions, it can give electrons to other elements, becoming a positively charged particle, or take them away, becoming a negatively charged particle. Neutrons do not carry any charge, but they affect the mass of the element. A unifying name was invented for protons and neutrons - nucleons.

Atoms of various elements

Atoms of different elements differ from each other in the number of protons in the nucleus. The number of electrons can change, but the number of protons never. How many protons are contained in the nucleus can be found by the element's atomic number in periodic table Mendeleev. Hydrogen (No. 1) has 1 electron and 1 proton at rest, lithium
(No. 3) - 3 electrons and 3 protons, carbon (No. 6) - 6 electrons and 6 protons.

Since different atoms have different numbers of protons, their masses also differ. The mass of an element is mainly formed by protons and neutrons, because the weight of electrons is negligible. But even atoms of the same element can have different weights due to different numbers of neutrons in the nucleus. Atoms in which the number of neutrons differs from the number of protons are called isotopes. For example, in nature there are carbon atoms C12 (6 protons and 6 neutrons), C13 (6 protons and 7 neutrons) and other varieties with a neutron content of 2 to 16.

Atom thing (Garg et al 2014); an element is a type of thing.

An atom is a collection of protons, neutrons and electrons. One isolated atom in the neutral state has some protons, the same number of electrons, and some neutrons (about the same number as protons for lighter elements, about 50% more for heavier elements). The number of neutrons or protons in an atom only changes as a result of radioactive processes or very high-energy interactions, such as you get in particle accelerators. And I mean really High Energy: Even if you think about blowing up sticks of dynamite, that's not enough energy to start messing around with protons and neutrons. Chemistry occurs when atoms combine and exchange electrons or give electrons to each other. Chemical reactions happen all the time, and many of them don't require much energy: moving electrons from atom to atom is often very simple.

So, the chemistry of an atom depends on the number of electrons, and the number of electrons in an isolated atom directly depends on the number of protons. Electrons are so easy to add and remove from atoms (just rub a balloon on your hair: static electricity- is that you transferred electrons between your hair and balloon), so we classify atoms according to the number of protons they have. Neutrons are not so relevant: I will talk about them at the end.

So the element an atom is determined by the number of protons. All hydrogen atoms have one proton, and all atoms with one proton are hydrogen. Two protons are helium, three are lithium, seventeen are chlorine, 79 are gold, etc. A pure sample of an element contains only atoms of this type: for example, a pure sample of iron contains only atoms with 26 protons. On the other hand, water is not an element: a water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms (one proton each) sharing electrons with an oxygen atom (eight protons).

Now, what does it mean to say that an element "cannot be broken down into a simpler form" and why are atoms not a "simpler form"? Well they are not a simpler form because the iron atom - iron: it's the same shape, it's not simpler. Think of it this way. If I give you a piece of pure iron, all you can do is break it into smaller pieces of iron or make it into a more complex substance, such as allowing it to rust. - Rust is formed from iron and oxygen. The smallest possible piece of iron you could make is a single atom of iron, but that's still just an incredibly tiny piece of iron. If you wanted to break a piece of iron beyond the individual iron atoms, you would need to use nuclear reactor or a particle accelerator or something like that, and then finally you could get something that wasn't iron because you would change the number of protons in the atoms.

Let's compare this to water. If I give you a bucket of pure water, then, like a piece of iron, you can split it into smaller and smaller samples, eventually ending up with a single molecule of water. But you can do something else: if you pass electricity through water, it splits into pure hydrogen and pure oxygen. These are "simpler" substances because each is made up of atoms of only one element, whereas water has atoms of two elements.

What about neutrons? Well, from a chemistry perspective, they don't do much, and atoms with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons are much more similar (they have essentially the same chemistry, for example) than atoms that have the same number of neutrons, but different numbers of protons. It makes much more sense to classify by the number of protons, since this determines the number of electrons and determines the chemistry.

Suppose you tried to classify atoms according to the number of neutrons. Best of all, most argon atoms (18 protons) have 22 neutrons, but some chlorine atoms (17 protons) and a fair share of potassium atoms (19 protons) also have 22 neutrons. As you probably know, argon, chlorine and potassium are completely different from each other. On the other hand, potassium atoms with 22 neutrons behave almost identically to the most common kind of potassium atoms, which have 21 neutrons.

What is the difference between the concepts “atom” and “molecule”? and got the best answer

Answer from Sunrise[expert]
an atom is smaller, one molecule can have several atoms (example - 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom = water molecule)

Reply from Diana Mamina[guru]
A molecule is made up of atoms.

Reply from NO[guru]
Except common places, also by birth.

Reply from Air[newbie]
an atom is an electrically neutral system of interacting elements, consisting of a nucleus and electrons. , and a molecule is a compound consisting of 2 or more atoms

Reply from Durchlaucht Furst[guru]
Atom (ancient Greek ἄτομος - indivisible) is the smallest part of a chemical element, which is the bearer of its properties. An atom consists of an atomic nucleus and a surrounding electron cloud. The nucleus of an atom consists of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons, while the cloud surrounding it consists of negatively charged electrons. If the number of protons in the nucleus coincides with the number of electrons, then the atom as a whole turns out to be electrically neutral. Otherwise, it has some positive or negative charge and is called an ion. Atoms are classified according to the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus: the number of protons determines whether the atom belongs to a certain chemical element, and the number of neutrons determines the isotope of this element.
Atoms various types in varying quantities, connected by interatomic bonds, form molecules.
The concept of an atom as the smallest indivisible part of matter was first formulated by ancient Indian and ancient Greek philosophers(see: atomism). In the XVII and XVIII centuries chemists were able to experimentally confirm this idea, showing that some substances cannot be further broken down into their constituent elements by chemical methods. However, in late XIX- At the beginning of the 20th century, physicists discovered subatomic particles and the composite structure of the atom, and it became clear that the atom is not really “indivisible.”
Molecule (New Latin molecula, diminutive from Latin moles - mass) is the smallest particle of a substance that carries its chemical properties.
A molecule consists of two or more atoms, characterized by the number of constituents atomic nuclei and electrons, as well as a certain structure.
It is usually assumed that molecules are neutral (carry no electrical charges) and do not carry unpaired electrons (all valences are saturated); charged molecules are called ions, molecules with a multiplicity different from unity (i.e., with unpaired electrons and unsaturated valences) are called radicals.
Molecules formed by hundreds or thousands of atoms are called macromolecules. The structural features of molecules determine physical properties substance consisting of these molecules.

Reply from Mariam Abdullah[newbie]
atoms also have an electric charge, while the molecule is neutral

Reply from Murvat Kazymov[newbie]
an atom is what a molecule is made of

Translated, “atom” means indivisible. It is named so because for a long time it was considered the smallest part of matter. But further development of science showed that this is not so. So, let's figure out what an atom is made of and how the atoms of different elements differ.

Atomic structure

Today, science knows 126 types of chemical elements. The general structure of their atoms is the same. Each has a nucleus of protons and neutrons around which electrons orbit. Electrons are negatively charged particles. As they rotate around the nucleus, an electron cloud is formed.

Protons are positively charged particles. At rest, an atom contains the same number of protons and electrons, so such a chemical element has no electrical charge. However, during reactions, it can give electrons to other elements, becoming a positively charged particle, or take them away, becoming a negatively charged particle. Neutrons do not carry any charge, but they affect the mass of the element. A unifying name was invented for protons and neutrons - nucleons.

Atoms of various elements

Atoms of different elements differ from each other in the number of protons in the nucleus. The number of electrons can change, but the number of protons never. How many protons are contained in the nucleus can be determined by the element's serial number in the periodic table of Mendeleev. Hydrogen (No. 1) has 1 electron and 1 proton at rest, lithium
(No. 3) - 3 electrons and 3 protons, carbon (No. 6) - 6 electrons and 6 protons.

Since different atoms have different numbers of protons, their masses also differ. The mass of an element is mainly formed by protons and neutrons, because the weight of electrons is negligible. But even atoms of the same element can have different weights due to different numbers of neutrons in the nucleus. Atoms in which the number of neutrons differs from the number of protons are called isotopes. For example, in nature there are carbon atoms C12 (6 protons and 6 neutrons), C13 (6 protons and 7 neutrons) and other varieties with a neutron content of 2 to 16.

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