Question: Wha5 do you know about atoms and neutrons

Hamish Cavaye answered on 22 Oct 2025:

Great question!

Atoms are the smallest particles that we can break elements down into and still call them elements. Atoms are made of a nucleus in the middle and a cloud of electrons buzzing around it. The nucleus contains protons and sometimes neutrons. The number of protons in the nucleus determines which element it is, for example, hydrogen has just 1 proton in its nucleus, whereas something like oxygen has 8 protons in the nucleus.

Protons have a positive charge and electrons have a negative charge, so in a neutral atom, there are equal numbers of protons and electrons. Neutrons have no charge, and so neutral atoms can have a variety of different numbers of neutrons in their nucleus.

The other cool thing about neutrons is that you can use them to learn about materials. I do this in my job. We have a huge machine, called a particle accelerator, that accelerates protons up to 84% of the speed of light. When these protons hit a lump of dense metal, it generates a lot of neutrons. We then bounce those neutrons off different materials in order to learn more about those materials.