Weekly Blog Post - Isotopes and Ions

Summary: During this week, I learned what an ion was as well as what a cation or an anion was. In fact, I learned that an ion was an atom that lost or gained electrons, which have a negative charge and orbit the atom in what our teacher called "energy levels" which appears to be a very fitting name. I also learned that an anion was an atom that gained electrons while a cation was an atom that lost electrons, so it had a positive charge whereas an anion had a negative charge.

I also learned about isotopes, such as an isotope was an element with a different number of neutrons - take selenium, for example. It's mass number (the number of protons plus the number of neutrons) is 50, but that's only with 34 protons and 16 neutrons. Or it can have 55 as its mass number, but that only works with 34 protons and 21 neutrons.

SP1: Asking testable and/or scientific questions. I asked scientific questions when I was completing our energy levels (1-20) worksheet, where we had to list out the number of electrons on different rings, almost like Saturn's rings (whereas the gas part of the planet (which is where Saturn gets the name "gas giant" like Jupiter) would be the nucleus with the neutrons and protons) with the number of electrons underneath the element name. Some of the questions that I asked were, "How many 'energy levels' can an atom reach up to?" Another question that I asked was "Is it possible for an atom to have more than eight electrons on a single ring?" and "How big would the ring have to be to contain more than eight electrons?"

Image link: Two chemists go to a party. When asked what they want to drink, the first one says "I think I'll have H2O." The second one says "I think I'll have H2O too." — and he died.