Atomic Structure

Protons, neutrons and electrons

The elements in the periodic table are made from millions of tiny little atoms.

Even smaller again, the atom is made from three sub atomic particles: protons, neutrons and electrons.

Different elements simply have different numbers of protons, neutrons or electrons.

The table below shows a comparison between these particles.

The word relative is used as we are directly comparing the charge and mass of these three particles, so
the values are relative to each other.

Particle Relative Charge Relative Mass

Proton +1 1
Neutron Neutral (or zero) 1
Electron -1 1/2000

You dont need to know the exact masses of each particle, just that electrons are very light in comparison
to protons and neutrons.

The nucleus consists of protons and neutrons. Most of the mass of an atom is in the nucleus.

Atomic Number and Mass Number

The periodic table is your friend. You can get a lot of very useful information from it.

In terms of this atomic stuff, we are using the periodic table to look for the numbers of protons, neutrons
and electrons in different elements.

This information is shown as the atomic number and the mass number.

For any element, the periodic table gives you the following information (X is just there to represent any
element):

From this information you can work out the number of protons, neutrons and electrons.
Remember that the bigger out the two numbers is the mass number. Just be careful as some periodic
tables might show the information in different ways. Its not always the number at the top.

Mass number = the number of protons plus the number of neutrons

Atomic number = the number of protons (or the number of electrons)

For sodium, we can say that:

Number of protons = 11

Number of electrons = 11

If we subtract the atomic number from the mass number we get the number of neutrons, therefore:

Number of neutrons = 23-11 = 12

Remember that for an element or a compound, the number of protons and the number of electrons
must equal each other as the overall charge is 0 or neutral.

Isotopes

Isotopes are atoms of the same element that have different number of neutrons

The number of protons and electrons dont change in isotopes.

Below are the two isotopes of chlorine. We can see that there are 17 protons in each and therefore 17
electrons.

Chemical reactivity is dependent on the electrons (this is useful to keep in mind for other topics).
As isotopes have the same number of electrons, they have the same reactivity. They also have very
similar physical properties but will vary slightly as the masses are slightly different.

chemical properties = reactivity physical properties = something measurable e.g. boiling point

We can see that the mass numbers of the two isotopes are 35 and 37. This means that the number of
neutrons must be different.
 35-17 = 18 neutrons and 37-17 = 20 neutrons

Definitions
In the periodic table chlorine has a mass number of 35.5, which is an average of its two isotopes (75% of
Cl is 35Cl and 25% is 37Cl).

The mass number of any element in the periodic table is called the relative atomic mass:

the average mass of an atom of an element relative to 1/12th of the mass of a 12C atom

You will see this phrase 1/12th of the mass of a 12C atom several times in Chemistry.

In science, you need a standard, something that you can compare things to. This gives results meaning.
They chose carbon 12 as that standard. Dont worry about why, its not that exciting.

Relative isotopic mass:

mass of an isotope relative to 1/12th of the mass of a 12C atom

This would be for example, 35Cl or 37Cl i.e. just one of the isotopes.

Relative formula/molecular mass is used to calculate the mass of any compound. Formula mass or
molecular mass, it doesnt really matter which word you use. Just add up the masses using the relative
atomic masses from the periodic table e.g. CO2 = 44

Ions
An ion is a charged atom or molecule. This means that the number of protons and electrons are not the
same either a negative or positive charge.

To form an ion you either lose or gain electrons. A positive ion has lost electrons and a negative ion has
gained electrons.
 Some students think that a positive ion means that you have gained something. This is completely
wrong! A + charge shows the absence of electrons.

For example, the magnesium ion, Mg2+, to work out the number of protons, neutrons and electrons for
the ion, we firstly start at the periodic table again:

Mg has 12 protons and therefore 12 electrons. Mg forms a 2+ ion. So to get Mg2+, we need to lose 2
electrons. We can say that the ion has 12 protons and neutrons but only 10 electrons.

Be careful with the above symbol representation as you still leave it with the 12.