A gram of water (about a thimble of water) contains 1023 atoms. (That’s a ‘1’ with 23 zeros after it.) That means there are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in a thimble of water! That’s more atoms than there are drops of water in all the lakes and rivers in the world.


Nearly all the mass of an atom is in its nucleus which occupies less than a trillionth of the volume of the atom. They are very dense. If you could pack nuclei like marbles, into something the size of a large pea, they would weigh about a billion tons! That’s 2,000,000,000,000 pounds! More than the weight of 20,000 battle ships! That’s a heavy pea!


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The distance from the nucleus to the electron is 100,000 times the diameter of the nucleus itself. So, if you were to somehow blow up a nucleus to be the size of a golf ball, the electron would be 8,300 feet away or more than 1.5 miles from the golf ball. If you put that golf ball on the ground, you would need to climb to the top of five and a half Sears Towers to get to the electron!


Danish physicist David Bohr, a famous scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 for his work with the atomic structure.
Danish physicist David Bohr, a famous scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 for his work with the atomic structure.

Let’s compare this to the Sun and the Earth. (In the picture on the left, the tiny dot in the left size is the actual size of the Earth. The Earth is really not this close to the sun – we just wanted you to get a feel for the sizes of both.) We’ll be doing more about distances and sizes when we do our lesson in Astronomy, but for now, we’ll just use this quick example:


If you shrank the Sun down to a golf ball, the Earth would only be 9 inches away. Nine inches vs. 1.5 miles! There is 11,000 times more distance (to scale) between the nucleus and an electron than there is between the Sun and the Earth!


Here’s one last example – if you enlarged the hydrogen atom (one proton in the nucleus and one electron in a shell) so that it’s the size of the Earth, the electron would be skimming along on the surface of the Earth while the nucleus (just a proton in this instance) would be only the size of a basketball deep inside the core. The rest, from the core to the surface, is empty space.  (Look out your window – can you even see the curvature of the Earth from where you are?  Probably not – it’s just too vast a distance!)


Are you mind-boggled? What this is basically saying, is that matter is virtually empty. The nucleus, which is incredibly tiny and quite heavy for it’s size, is outrageously far away from its electrons. An atom has almost nothing in it and yet everything we come in contact with is made of this ‘nothing’! I don’t know about you, but I find that fantastic!


We will talk more about this wacky atom thing and we’ll get into more detail about the even wackier electron. In the meantime, try to think about everything as a bunch of atoms. The next time you drink milk, you’re drinking atoms. The next time you feel wind, you’re feeling atoms. A lot of things become a bit clearer if you think of objects as being nothing more than bunches of small particles stuck together.


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9 Responses to “Atomic Facts”

  2. Jennifer Schreckhise says:

    Hi Mrs. Aurora,
    Is there ANY way to knock the protons and electrons off of an atom? That would leave the nucleus totally exposed, leading to some pretty wild experiments.
    Thanks! -Josiah

  3. You found one of the very few experiments listed in the ‘experiments & video’ section that does not have a video because it’s a thought experiment – it happens in your mind. There’s only a couple of these now and then when appropriate so I hope you won’t be too disappointed.

  4. Theresa Getubig says:

    hey um where is the video and steps for the experament

  5. If the atom was the size of the earth, the nucleus would be the size of a basketball at the center, and the electron cloud would hover near the surface of the earth. Wild, isn’t it?

  6. Sonya Fiebig says:

    Here is another question…

    What is in the space between the electrons and the nucleus of an atom?

    Laura Fiebig.

  7. Protons and neutrons are made up of quarks – you can read more about those in the Unit 7: Particle Physics section of Lesson 1. Electrons are as small as they can go – you can’t split one apart to find something else inside. The type of element is determined by the number of protons in the core.

    The world is made up of LOTS of different type of particles, however all visible matter you and I know through everyday life is only made of up of those three. Think of it like this – all the stories, communication, literature, talks, lectures, etc. in the entire world are all made up of only 26 letters. Every idea ever written down, poetry, music lyric… all made up of only 26 letters in different combinations. The proton, neutron, and electron make up the atoms/elements, which make up the molecules.

    For example, when you put together one proton and one electron, you get a hydrogen molecule. When you combine two hydrogen and one oxygen, you get the water molecule.

    The forces involved keep the world from becoming a blob – the strong force keeps the atom’s core together, and the electromagnetic force keeps everything the right distance apart so things don’t fly apart or fall into each other.

    The charge on the proton is from the charge of the quarks that make up the nucleons (protons and neutrons). A proton is made of two Up quarks, with 2/3 positive charge each and one Down Quark with a negative 1/3 charge (2/3 + 2/3 + -1/3 = 1). A neutron is made up of two Down quarks with a negative 1/3 charge each and one Up quark with a positive 2/3 charge. (-1/3 + -1/3 + 2/3 = 0). You’ll want to really go to Unit 7 for more detail! 🙂

    Great questions – keep it up!

  8. Sonya Fiebig says:

    Hi Aurora,

    I have two questions relating to atoms and matter:

    1. If all atomic particles (neutrons, protons, electrons) are made of the same thing, as far as I know, then how does having a different number of protons and neutrons possibly create a different element? If the world is made up of only three different things, then why are there all these different elements? If the world was an element free ‘blob’, then surely a different atomic mass would just make a heavier or lighter bit of blob.

    2. What makes a proton and electron have a charge?

    Thank you
    Laura Fiebig

  9. PS – My kids LOVE saying that they need to get some di-hydrogen monoxide to drink!! ~Shawn