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Article: Electrons
- Article from:
- Science of Everyday Things
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ELECTRONS
CONCEPT
No one can see an electron. Even an electron microscope, used for imaging the activities of these subatomic particles, does not offer a glimpse of an electron as one can look at an amoeba; instead, the microscope detects the patterns of electron deflection. In any case, a single-cell organism is gargantuan in comparison to an electron. Even when compared to a proton or a neutron, particles at the center of an atom, electrons are minuscule, being slightly more than 1/2000 the size of either. Yet the electron is the key to understanding the chemical process of bonding, and electron configurations clarify a number of aspects of the periodic table that may, at first, seem ...