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Electron
Description
Electrons
Electrons are tiny particles that move around the nucleus of an atom. They carry a negative electric charge and are much smaller and lighter than protons and neutrons. Electrons are important because they control how atoms bond and interact with each other. For example, when two atoms share or transfer electrons,...
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Transcript
Have you ever wondered what’s inside an atom? J.J. Thomson asked the same question, and his curiosity led to an important discovery: the electron.
Electrons are tiny parts of an atom, along with protons and neutrons.
But unlike protons and neutrons, which sit tightly in the nucleus, electrons move quickly around the outside, almost like planets orbiting the sun.
Some of these outer electrons are only loosely bound to the nucleus.
Because of this, they can behave in different ways: drifting freely through a metal wire to carry electricity, being shared between atoms, or even jumping from one atom to another to form chemical bonds.
Electrons are almost weightless. It takes about 1,836 of them to equal the mass of a single proton.
Electrons have a negative charge, which balances the positive charge of protons in the nucleus, keeping atoms electrically neutral.
Electrons may be tiny, but they’re the reason atoms connect, electricity flows, and our world works the way it does.
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