Atoms are greedy

Yes they are.

Atoms have the same number of protons as their electrons, therefore they're neutral. However, atoms have a level of electronegativity and ionization energy. Electronegativity describes how greedy atoms of a given element are, or their tendencies to attract electrons. The trend of electronegativity increases from the bottom left to the top right of the table. The least electronegative atom is Cesium because it has the most electron shells, which makes it hold its electrons very loosely. Opposite Cesium is Flourine, with the highest level of electronegativity because it holds its many electrons very tightly. The noble gases generally do not have any electronegativity because their electron shells are full.

Ionization energy is the amount of energy it takes to remove an electron from an atom's outermost valence shell. Similar to the electronegativity trend, the amount of energy increases from the bottom left to the top right. Helium has the highest ionization energy because it holds its electrons very tightly and has its electron closest to the positive nucleus (because it only has one shell), and therefore it requires the most energy to pull the electron off.

Nucleus!

THIS this week, which is not this week, we learned about how atoms were discovered and what they -probably- look like. They're a really small particle unseen by the human eye, with an even smaller nucleus made up of protons and neutrons. (If the atom was a football stadium, the proton is only the size of a fly in the middle. :o)

Swirling around the nucleus are extremely tiny electrons in a giant cloud. The number of protons determines what kind of elemental atom it is, and the number of neutrons can make it a different kind of isotope. Atoms can lose or gain electrons and become cations and anions, respectively. The ones in Groups 1, 2, and 3 lose 1, 2, and 3 electrons to make 1+, 2+, and 3+ charged cations. They can merge with those in Groups 6 and 7, which gain 2 and 1 electron(s) to make ionic compounds. They can combine to make compounds like salt (NaCl)!

On Thursday, we watched a Simpsons parody of the Powers of Ten video. Apparently we all live inside Homer Simpson's hair cell, in his DNA. What if we get shaved off? :(

This week:

This week:



We learned about the periodic table. :O
It was invented in the 1700s by a scientist named Mendeleev (Men-dal-lay-yev)
The table is organized by trends that go from left to right and up to down. Most of the metals are on the left side, and the right side is nonmetals. If you go down a group, the reactivity, atomic size, and atomic mass get bigger (except for the halogens, where it goes from bottom up, with Flourine being the most reactive)~

If you go from left to right, the atomic size gets smaller but the mass gets bigger, because they have more protons and it makes the atom heavier but smaller at the same time. The alkali metals on the left are really reactive to water, while the noble gases at the very far right are completely unreactive~

quizzes, and burning steel

Today we had an "Isaquiz" that had us do all sorts of algebra and graphing and converting units! I thought it was really boring and easy :c

Then we had to register for our online textbook (which I already did beforehand) and then finish up our glossary definitions on Google Doc(uments).

At least yesterday, we had lots of fun burning steel wool and electrocuting water until it split into hydrogen and oxygen. The lighter almost burned someone's lab paper if they didn't turn it off in time ~! Then we would've had a chemical reaction where the paper would turn into smoke :]