What's the Difference between an Atom and a Molecule?
what
's thedifference
between anatom
and amolecule
if you're wondering this you're definitely not alone because this is such a common question in chemistry so the short answer isatom
s are like Legos or blocks or bricks andmolecule
s are like this stuff that we actually build with those blocks of bricks that's a short answer let me give you a longer answer that might be more useful so let's start by talking a little bit aboutatom
s there are a few important parts of that anatom
has a nucleus which is made up of protons and neutrons that'swhat
I've drawn here with little dots and then around the nucleus of theatom
that's where electrons live and electrons live in these circular neighborhoods called energy levels and so I'm drawing in the electrons here with these black dots manyatom
s have more than one energy level so they have these rings kind of around the nucleus like this with these electrons ok so here's oneatom
let me draw another outhere's a proton here's a neutron this Anjelica have one proton and then around the nucleus here's electron here's a here's an energy level where one electron lives ok so two
atom
s here so there are all sorts of different types ofatom
and the type ofatom
that you have depends on the number of protons in the nucleus thisatom
over here has eight protons in the nucleus which it which means it is anatom
of oxygen this one over here only has one proton of nucleus which meansthat it is an
atom
of hydrogen as I said there are all different kinds ofatom
s and they're actually about 100 different kinds and when we talk about them is usually easier than instead of like writing out the name every time we use abbreviations so we want to talk about oxygen we write an O for hydrogen there's an H we have carbonatom
s represented by a see we have nitrogenatom
s represented by an N chlorine with a CL fluorine with an F and so on and so forth all of these ABS all thesetypes of
atom
s are all a little bit different I like to think about these like Lego blocks right there are all these different types of Lego blocks but they're all a little bit different there are different colors they're different sizes some are tall others are like flat and skinny and that's like theseatom
s that all have slightly different characteristics now the the different characteristics of these Lego blocks come in handy when we actually want to build something with them andthen we're happy that you know one is really skinny or one is red or
what
ever and so that's where the different qualities of theatom
s come into play we take these bricks and we build like a little house with and now we're talking aboutmolecule
s so we take these bricks and we snap them together we can do the same thing withatom
s I can take an oxygenatom
and snap it together with two hydrogenatom
s and when I say snap it together I mean I physically connect it that'swhat
theselittle lines here represent and when I do that when I have one oxygen connected to two hydrogen's I have a
molecule
of water then I call it h2o because there are two hydrogen's and one oxygen or I can do this I can take a carbonatom
and snap three hydrogen's to it attach another carbon with two hydrogen's and then an oxygen and then a hydrogen and I have amolecule
called ethanol which is a kind of alcohol that's in beer and wine so the point ismolecule
s are made when wetake individual
atom
s and physically combine them together to make stuff just the same way we take individual Lego blocks and snap them together to build houses or wherever you want to make and I'll even take this one step for it I show it at the beginning that if we could zoom in zillions and zillions of times this iswhat
Nana would look if we took this watermolecule
and we could zoom in on in millions and millions of times this iswhat
we'd see and we'd see the oxygenatom
andthe two hydrogen
atom
s and that they're actually all physically connected together they're physically connected because they're sharing electrons formingwhat
's called covalent bond you don't already know that don't worry about it but they're connected here because they're sharing electrons and so now they've made like a physical connection between each other and they've made you know something that's like one of these these Lego houses whereeverything gets snapped together so anyway that is the