What is an atom?

Have you ever wondered what you, your chair, a glass of water, and a roaring T-Rex all have in common? They are all made out of the exact same tiny, invisible building blocks called atoms! Join Mira and Finn on Science is Not Boring as they uncover the ultimate microscopic secret of the universe. Discover how these mind-bogglingly small puzzle pieces work—if you blew up an apple to the size of planet Earth, its atoms would only be the size of a regular apple! Get ready to have your mind blown when you find out there are only 118 different types of atoms that build absolutely everything, just like the ultimate set of cosmic Lego blocks. You'll learn why you are literally made of ancient, recycled stardust, and why every single human on Earth could squeeze into a single sugar cube because you are mostly made of empty space! Plus, travel 300 feet underground to the freezing cold Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, where scientists smash atoms together at the speed of light. Tune in to find out why you are a walking, talking masterpiece of science!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Welcome to Science Is Not Boring by Kidopoly.com. I'm Mira! And I'm Finn. Hey Finn, I want you to close your eyes and picture a totally normal apple.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Okay, got it. It's red and shiny.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Now, imagine we have a magic magnifying glass. We blow that apple up until it's the exact same size as the entire planet Earth!

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Haha, that is one giant apple. It would crush everything!

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Definitely! But here is the mind-blowing part. If that apple was the size of the Earth, the tiny building blocks that make it up would only be the size of a regular apple.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Wait, what? Are you saying the pieces that make up an apple are that small?

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Exactly! Today we are talking about the ultimate invisible secret of the universe. The incredibly tiny, mind-bogglingly small puzzle pieces that build absolutely everything. You mean they make up the chair I'm sitting on? Yep, and the water you drink, the grass outside, and even your own hands! Today we are discovering atoms.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Okay, so what actually is an atom? If it's too small to see, how do we know it's there?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Think of atoms like the universe's ultimate set of Lego blocks. If you look closely at anything, it's just a bunch of these tiny blocks snapped together.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

But wait, there are millions of different things in the world. Slime, wood, metal, pizza. Are there millions of different types of atoms?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

That's the craziest part. There are only about 118 different kinds of atoms in the whole universe. We call them elements.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Only 118? That's not a lot of blocks to build a whole universe.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

It's all about how you snap them together. For example, take two blocks of hydrogen and snap them onto one block of oxygen. Oh, I know this! H2O! That makes water! Spot on! Snap different atoms together and you get salt. Snap other ones together, and you get the screen you are looking at right now. Just how small are we talking? Could a hundred atoms fit on the tip of a pin? Try millions! Let's take a single grain of sand. Guess how many atoms are inside one tiny grain? Um, maybe a billion? Nope. One grain of sand holds about fifty quintillion atoms. That is a 50 with 18 zeros behind it.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

50 quintillion? In one grain of sand? That makes my brain hurt. If there are that many atoms just in sand, where do they all come from? Do we have factories making new atoms?

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Nope. The atoms we have are the atoms we've always had. They just get recycled over and over again for billions of years.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Wait, recycled? Like plastic bottles.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Exactly! When something dies or breaks down, its atoms scatter and get used to build new things. You might have an atom in your hand right now that used to be part of a roaring T-Rex.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

No way! I have dinosaur atoms in me. That is the coolest thing ever.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

It gets better. Almost all the heavy atoms in your body were created inside giant exploding stars billions of years ago. Like Carl Sagan said, we are literally made of star stuff.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Okay, so if we are made of these tiny solid blocks of stardust, why can I squish my cheek?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Ah, well, that's because atoms aren't solid blocks at all. In 1909, scientist Ernest Rutherford directed his team, Geiger and Marsden, to fire tiny particles at a super thin sheet of gold foil. What happened? Did it bounce off? Most of his particles shot right through the solid gold, as if nothing was there. He was shocked. He said it was like firing a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and having it bounce right back. How can something shoot straight through solid gold? Because atoms are 99.9999999% empty space. They have a tiny, heavy centre called a mucleus, with even tinier bits called electrons zooming around it. Everything else is just empty space. So I'm mostly empty space. You are. In fact, if you squeezed all the empty space out of the atoms in all 8 billion humans on Earth, the entire human race would fit inside a single sugar cube.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

A sugar cube? That is definitely the craziest thing I have ever heard. Okay, but if atoms are too small to see, and they are mostly empty space, how do scientists actually study them today?

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Oh, you are going to love this. To figure out what's inside an atom, scientists built the biggest, most complicated machine in human history. It's called the Large Hadron Collider.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Large Hadron Collider?

SPEAKER_00 6:10

That sounds like a spaceship. Where is it? It's buried 300 feet underground near Geneva, Switzerland. And it is massive. It's a giant tunnel shaped like a ring that is 16.6 miles around.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

16.6 miles? Just to look at something smaller than a grain of sand? What do they do inside the tunnel?

SPEAKER_00 6:34

They smash atoms together. They take tiny particles and use giant magnets to race them around that 16.6 mile tunnel in opposite directions. How fast do they go? They zoom around at 99.999999% the speed of light. They complete over 11,000 laps of that 16.6 mile ring every single second. 11,000 laps a second? That friction must be so hot. Actually, the tunnel has to be super cooled by liquid helium. The magnets are chilled to minus 271.3 degrees Celsius. That makes the inside of this machine colder than outer space.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Wait, so you have the fastest particles ever in a tunnel colder than space racing toward each other. What happens when they hit?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

BAM! They crash into each other. The collision creates a tiny flash of energy, and scientists use giant, building-sized cameras to take pictures of the pieces that fly out. So by smashing them, we get to see what's actually hiding inside the atoms. Exactly! An older, different particle smasher discovered things called quarks that way. And in 2012, the LHC found something famous called the Higgs boson, which helps explain why particles in the universe have mass at all.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

So by understanding these invisible little specks, we understand the whole universe. The stars, the planets, and me.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

You got it. And speaking of you, here is a wild number. The average human body contains about seven octilion atoms. Let me guess, that's a seven with a lot of zeros. Yep, a seven followed by 27 zeros. And here is the weirdest fact of all. Your atoms are constantly trading places with the world around you.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Wait, am I losing my atoms?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

You breathe them out, sweat them out, and shed them. But you also take in new atoms when you eat, drink, and breathe. Over time, your body replaces most of its atoms, though some stay for life. Most of them?

SPEAKER_01 8:58

So I'm basically a constantly updating brand new Finn?

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Yes, you are a walking, talking, recycled masterpiece of stardust. Alright, Finn, time for the quiz.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Are you ready? I am ready. Give me those stardust questions.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Okay, first question. How many different kinds of atoms, also known as elements, are there in the universe? Next one, this is tricky. If you blew an apple up to the size of the Earth, how big would its atoms be? Question three. What giant machine buried underground in Switzerland smashes atoms together? Alright, here's number four. Atoms are almost entirely made up of what? Last question. How cold are the magnets inside the large hadron collider? Great job! Let's go through the answers and see how you did. The answer to question one is there are about 118 different kinds of atoms, or elements. For question two, if you blew an apple up to the size of the Earth, its atoms would be the size of the original apple. Number three, the answer is the large hadron collider. Question four. Atoms are almost entirely made of empty space, like 99.9999999% empty space. And the final answer is the magnets are minus 271.3 degrees Celsius, which is colder than outer space.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

I still can't believe all of humans could fit into a sugar cube if you took out the empty space. Atoms are seriously wild.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

They really are! Everything we see, touch and do is just stardust playing the coolest game of Lego ever.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Hey, if you enjoyed learning about the invisible building blocks of the universe, we'd love it if you could leave us a five-star review.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Yes! Just use a few of your seven octilian atoms to scroll down and tap those five stars on your podcast app.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Oh, and head over to our site kidopoly.com for tons of fun learning games and cool activities to explore.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

And if you want to shout out on the show or just want to say hi, send us an email at hello at kidopoly.com. We love hearing from you.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Keep wondering and keep questioning.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

See you next time on Science Is Not Boring. Bye.