WEBVTT 00:00:00.660 --> 00:00:03.120 We humans have known, for thousands of years, 00:00:03.120 --> 00:00:05.341 just looking at our environment around us, 00:00:05.341 --> 00:00:06.840 that there are different substances. 00:00:06.840 --> 00:00:08.600 And these different substances tend 00:00:08.600 --> 00:00:10.120 to have different properties. 00:00:10.120 --> 00:00:11.470 And not only do they have different properties, 00:00:11.470 --> 00:00:13.400 one might reflect light in a certain way, 00:00:13.400 --> 00:00:16.230 or not reflect light, or be a certain color, or at 00:00:16.230 --> 00:00:20.390 a certain temperature, be liquid or gas, or be a solid. 00:00:20.390 --> 00:00:22.290 But we also start to observe how they 00:00:22.290 --> 00:00:25.030 react with each other in certain circumstances. 00:00:25.030 --> 00:00:27.410 And here's pictures of some of these substances. 00:00:27.410 --> 00:00:29.070 This right here is carbon. 00:00:29.070 --> 00:00:31.650 And this is in its graphite form. 00:00:31.650 --> 00:00:33.910 This right here is lead. 00:00:33.910 --> 00:00:36.030 This right here is gold. 00:00:36.030 --> 00:00:38.750 And all of the ones that I've shown pictures of, here-- 00:00:38.750 --> 00:00:41.720 and I got them all from this website, right over there-- 00:00:41.720 --> 00:00:43.460 all of these are in their solid form. 00:00:43.460 --> 00:00:45.830 But we also know that it looks like there's 00:00:45.830 --> 00:00:49.240 certain types of air, and certain types of air particles. 00:00:49.240 --> 00:00:51.090 And depending on what type of air particles 00:00:51.090 --> 00:00:55.590 you're looking at, whether it is carbon or oxygen or nitrogen, 00:00:55.590 --> 00:00:57.790 that seems to have different types of properties. 00:00:57.790 --> 00:00:59.666 Or there are other things that can be liquid. 00:00:59.666 --> 00:01:01.665 Or even if you raise the temperature high enough 00:01:01.665 --> 00:01:02.360 on these things. 00:01:02.360 --> 00:01:04.485 You could, if you raise the temperature high enough 00:01:04.485 --> 00:01:06.440 on gold or lead, you could get a liquid. 00:01:06.440 --> 00:01:10.360 Or if you, kind of, if you burn this carbon, 00:01:10.360 --> 00:01:12.020 you can get it to a gaseous state. 00:01:12.020 --> 00:01:13.690 You can release it into the atmosphere. 00:01:13.690 --> 00:01:14.880 You can break its structure. 00:01:14.880 --> 00:01:18.530 So these are things that we've all, kind of, that humanity 00:01:18.530 --> 00:01:21.000 has observed for thousands of years. 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:22.530 But it leads to a natural question 00:01:22.530 --> 00:01:24.420 that used to be a philosophical question. 00:01:24.420 --> 00:01:26.790 But now we can answer it a little bit better. 00:01:26.790 --> 00:01:31.320 And that question is, if you keep breaking down this carbon, 00:01:31.320 --> 00:01:33.970 into smaller and smaller chunks, is there 00:01:33.970 --> 00:01:38.930 some smallest chunk, some smallest unit, of this stuff, 00:01:38.930 --> 00:01:43.314 of this substance, that still has the properties of carbon? 00:01:43.314 --> 00:01:44.730 And if you were to, somehow, break 00:01:44.730 --> 00:01:46.271 that even further, somehow, you would 00:01:46.271 --> 00:01:48.270 lose the properties of the carbon. 00:01:48.270 --> 00:01:50.380 And the answer is, there is. 00:01:50.380 --> 00:01:52.030 And so just to get our terminology, 00:01:52.030 --> 00:01:54.940 we call these different substances-- 00:01:54.940 --> 00:01:58.070 these pure substances that have these specific properties 00:01:58.070 --> 00:01:59.960 at certain temperatures and react 00:01:59.960 --> 00:02:02.020 in certain ways-- we call them elements. 00:02:05.210 --> 00:02:06.470 Carbon is an element. 00:02:06.470 --> 00:02:07.570 Lead is an element. 00:02:07.570 --> 00:02:08.910 Gold is an element. 00:02:08.910 --> 00:02:10.949 You might say that water is an element. 00:02:10.949 --> 00:02:13.827 And in history, people have referred to water 00:02:13.827 --> 00:02:14.410 as an element. 00:02:14.410 --> 00:02:18.250 But now we know that water is made up of more basic elements. 00:02:18.250 --> 00:02:21.100 It's made of oxygen and of hydrogen. 00:02:21.100 --> 00:02:25.120 And all of our elements are listed here 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:27.830 in the Periodic Table of Elements. 00:02:27.830 --> 00:02:30.450 C stands for carbon-- I'm just going through the ones that 00:02:30.450 --> 00:02:33.280 are very relevant to humanity, but over time, you'll 00:02:33.280 --> 00:02:35.710 probably familiarize yourself with all of these. 00:02:35.710 --> 00:02:36.610 This is oxygen. 00:02:36.610 --> 00:02:38.020 This is nitrogen. 00:02:38.020 --> 00:02:40.140 This is silicon. 00:02:40.140 --> 00:02:42.090 Au is gold. 00:02:42.090 --> 00:02:43.280 This is lead. 00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:49.380 And that most basic unit, of any of these elements, is the atom. 00:02:52.620 --> 00:02:55.050 So if you were to keep digging in, and keep 00:02:55.050 --> 00:02:56.940 taking smaller and smaller chunks of this, 00:02:56.940 --> 00:02:59.739 eventually, you would get to a carbon atom. 00:02:59.739 --> 00:03:01.530 Do the same thing over here, eventually you 00:03:01.530 --> 00:03:02.616 would get to a gold atom. 00:03:02.616 --> 00:03:04.490 You did the same thing over here, eventually, 00:03:04.490 --> 00:03:05.864 you would get some-- this little, 00:03:05.864 --> 00:03:08.000 small, for lack of a better word, particle, 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:09.450 that you would call a lead atom. 00:03:09.450 --> 00:03:11.241 And you wouldn't be able to break that down 00:03:11.241 --> 00:03:13.560 anymore and still call that lead, 00:03:13.560 --> 00:03:17.110 for it to still have the properties of lead. 00:03:17.110 --> 00:03:19.490 And just to give you an idea-- this is really something 00:03:19.490 --> 00:03:21.600 that I have trouble imagining-- is 00:03:21.600 --> 00:03:24.690 that atoms are unbelievably small, really 00:03:24.690 --> 00:03:26.220 unimaginably small. 00:03:26.220 --> 00:03:27.750 So for example, carbon. 00:03:27.750 --> 00:03:29.550 My hair is also made out of carbon. 00:03:29.550 --> 00:03:33.320 In fact, most of me is made out of carbon. 00:03:33.320 --> 00:03:36.690 In fact, most of all living things are made out of carbon. 00:03:36.690 --> 00:03:40.840 And so if you took my hair-- and so my hair is carbon, 00:03:40.840 --> 00:03:42.262 my hair is mostly carbon. 00:03:42.262 --> 00:03:43.970 So if you took my hair-- right over here, 00:03:43.970 --> 00:03:46.075 my hair isn't yellow, but it contrasts nicely 00:03:46.075 --> 00:03:46.700 with the black. 00:03:46.700 --> 00:03:48.280 My hair is black, but if I did that, 00:03:48.280 --> 00:03:50.270 you wouldn't be able to see it on the screen. 00:03:50.270 --> 00:03:51.769 But if you took my hair, here, and I 00:03:51.769 --> 00:03:55.820 were to ask you, how many carbon atoms wide is my hair? 00:03:55.820 --> 00:03:57.870 So, if you took a cross section of my hair, not 00:03:57.870 --> 00:04:00.040 the length, the width of my hair, 00:04:00.040 --> 00:04:03.384 and said, how many carbon atoms wide is that? 00:04:03.384 --> 00:04:04.800 And you might guess, oh, you know, 00:04:04.800 --> 00:04:07.540 Sal already told me they're very small. 00:04:07.540 --> 00:04:10.016 So maybe there's 1,000 carbon atoms there, or 10,000, 00:04:10.016 --> 00:04:10.780 or 100,000. 00:04:10.780 --> 00:04:12.000 I would say, no. 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:14.540 There are 1 million carbon atoms, 00:04:14.540 --> 00:04:17.579 or you could string 1 million carbon atoms 00:04:17.579 --> 00:04:21.314 across the width of the average human hair. 00:04:21.314 --> 00:04:22.730 That's obviously an approximation. 00:04:22.730 --> 00:04:23.970 It's not exactly 1 million. 00:04:23.970 --> 00:04:26.860 But that gives you a sense of how small an atom is. 00:04:26.860 --> 00:04:28.620 You know, pluck a hair out of your head, 00:04:28.620 --> 00:04:31.300 and just imagine putting a million things 00:04:31.300 --> 00:04:34.440 next to each other, across the hair. 00:04:34.440 --> 00:04:37.450 Not the length of the hair, the width of the hair. 00:04:37.450 --> 00:04:39.360 It's even hard to see the width of a hair, 00:04:39.360 --> 00:04:41.110 and there would be a million carbon atoms, 00:04:41.110 --> 00:04:43.180 just going along it. 00:04:43.180 --> 00:04:46.860 Now it would be pretty cool, in and of itself, 00:04:46.860 --> 00:04:50.840 that we do know that there is this most basic building 00:04:50.840 --> 00:04:54.220 block of carbon, this most basic building block of any element. 00:04:54.220 --> 00:04:57.130 But what's even neater is that, those basic building 00:04:57.130 --> 00:04:58.570 blocks are related to each other. 00:04:58.570 --> 00:05:02.400 That a carbon atom is made up of even more fundamental 00:05:02.400 --> 00:05:02.950 particles. 00:05:02.950 --> 00:05:07.671 A gold atom is made up even more fundamental particles. 00:05:07.671 --> 00:05:09.170 And depending-- and they're actually 00:05:09.170 --> 00:05:12.870 defined by the arrangement of those fundamental particles. 00:05:12.870 --> 00:05:15.430 And if you were to change the number of fundamental particles 00:05:15.430 --> 00:05:18.430 you have, you could change the properties of the element, how 00:05:18.430 --> 00:05:22.810 it would react, or you could even change the element itself. 00:05:22.810 --> 00:05:25.480 And just to understand it a little bit better, 00:05:25.480 --> 00:05:28.260 let's talk about those fundamental elements. 00:05:28.260 --> 00:05:30.365 So you have the proton. 00:05:33.020 --> 00:05:36.000 And the proton is actually the defining-- the number 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:38.340 of protons in the nucleus of an atom, 00:05:38.340 --> 00:05:40.610 and I'll talk about the nucleus in a second-- that 00:05:40.610 --> 00:05:43.010 is what defines the element. 00:05:43.010 --> 00:05:45.702 So this is what defines an element. 00:05:45.702 --> 00:05:47.660 When you look at the periodic table right here, 00:05:47.660 --> 00:05:50.490 they're actually written in order of atomic number. 00:05:50.490 --> 00:05:52.250 And the atomic number is, literally, 00:05:52.250 --> 00:05:55.140 just the number of protons in the element. 00:05:55.140 --> 00:05:58.950 So by definition, hydrogen has one proton, 00:05:58.950 --> 00:06:03.120 helium has two protons, carbon has six protons. 00:06:03.120 --> 00:06:05.440 You cannot have carbon with seven protons. 00:06:05.440 --> 00:06:07.150 If you did, it would be nitrogen. 00:06:07.150 --> 00:06:09.300 It would not be carbon anymore. 00:06:09.300 --> 00:06:10.732 Oxygen has eight protons. 00:06:10.732 --> 00:06:12.940 If, somehow, you were to add another proton to there, 00:06:12.940 --> 00:06:14.680 it wouldn't be oxygen anymore. 00:06:14.680 --> 00:06:16.370 It would be fluorine. 00:06:16.370 --> 00:06:17.705 So it defines the element. 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:22.450 And the atomic number, the number 00:06:22.450 --> 00:06:25.549 of protons-- and remember, that's 00:06:25.549 --> 00:06:27.340 the number that's written right at the top, 00:06:27.340 --> 00:06:30.260 here, for each of these elements in the periodic table-- 00:06:30.260 --> 00:06:33.010 the number of protons is equal to the atomic number. 00:06:36.705 --> 00:06:38.080 And they put that number up here, 00:06:38.080 --> 00:06:42.160 because that is the defining characteristic of an element. 00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:46.050 The other two constituents of an atom-- I 00:06:46.050 --> 00:06:47.430 guess we could call it that way-- 00:06:47.430 --> 00:06:51.780 are the electron and the neutron. 00:06:55.390 --> 00:06:57.110 And the model you can start to build 00:06:57.110 --> 00:07:01.320 in your head-- and this model, as we go through chemistry, 00:07:01.320 --> 00:07:03.690 it'll get a little bit more abstract and really hard 00:07:03.690 --> 00:07:04.976 to conceptualize. 00:07:04.976 --> 00:07:06.350 But one way to think about it is, 00:07:06.350 --> 00:07:08.430 you have the protons and the neutrons that 00:07:08.430 --> 00:07:09.850 are at the center of the atom. 00:07:09.850 --> 00:07:11.710 They're the nucleus of the atom. 00:07:11.710 --> 00:07:15.060 So for example, carbon, we know, has six protons. 00:07:15.060 --> 00:07:19.660 So one, two, three, four, five, six. 00:07:19.660 --> 00:07:22.420 Carbon-12, which is a version of carbon, 00:07:22.420 --> 00:07:24.110 will also have six neutrons. 00:07:24.110 --> 00:07:26.100 You can have versions of carbon that 00:07:26.100 --> 00:07:27.940 have a different number of neutrons. 00:07:27.940 --> 00:07:30.330 So the neutrons can change, the electrons can change, 00:07:30.330 --> 00:07:31.830 you can still have the same element. 00:07:31.830 --> 00:07:33.280 The protons can't change. 00:07:33.280 --> 00:07:36.480 You change the protons, you've got a different element. 00:07:36.480 --> 00:07:41.300 So let me draw a carbon-12 nucleus, one, two, three, four, 00:07:41.300 --> 00:07:43.300 five, six. 00:07:43.300 --> 00:07:46.450 So this right here is the nucleus of carbon-12. 00:07:46.450 --> 00:07:48.910 And sometimes, it'll be written like this. 00:07:48.910 --> 00:07:52.720 And sometimes, they'll actually write the number of protons, 00:07:52.720 --> 00:07:53.840 as well. 00:07:53.840 --> 00:07:56.510 And the reason why we write it carbon-12-- 00:07:56.510 --> 00:07:58.830 you know, I counted out six neutrons-- 00:07:58.830 --> 00:08:00.760 is that, this is the total, you could 00:08:00.760 --> 00:08:04.206 view this as the total number of-- one way to view it. 00:08:04.206 --> 00:08:05.580 And we'll get a little bit nuance 00:08:05.580 --> 00:08:08.370 in the future-- is that this is the total number of protons 00:08:08.370 --> 00:08:11.870 and neutrons inside of its nucleus. 00:08:11.870 --> 00:08:15.172 And this carbon, by definition, has an atomic number of six, 00:08:15.172 --> 00:08:16.630 but we can rewrite it here, just so 00:08:16.630 --> 00:08:18.870 that we can remind ourselves. 00:08:18.870 --> 00:08:21.550 So at the center of a carbon atom, we have this nucleus. 00:08:21.550 --> 00:08:25.000 And carbon-12 will have six protons and six neutrons. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:26.970 Another version of carbon, carbon-14, 00:08:26.970 --> 00:08:29.040 will still have six protons, but then it 00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:31.018 would have eight neutrons. 00:08:31.018 --> 00:08:32.559 So the number of neutrons can change. 00:08:32.559 --> 00:08:34.950 But this is carbon-12, right over here. 00:08:34.950 --> 00:08:38.990 And if carbon-12 is neutral-- and I'll give a little nuance 00:08:38.990 --> 00:08:41.419 on this word in a second as well-- if it is neutral, 00:08:41.419 --> 00:08:43.890 it'll also have six electrons. 00:08:43.890 --> 00:08:47.690 So let me draw those six electrons, one, two, three, 00:08:47.690 --> 00:08:49.910 four, five, six. 00:08:49.910 --> 00:08:52.190 And one way-- and this is maybe the first-order way 00:08:52.190 --> 00:08:54.980 of thinking about the relationship 00:08:54.980 --> 00:08:57.380 between the electrons and the nucleus-- 00:08:57.380 --> 00:09:00.340 is that you can imagine the electrons are, kind of, moving 00:09:00.340 --> 00:09:02.930 around, buzzing around this nucleus. 00:09:02.930 --> 00:09:04.540 One model is, you could, kind of, 00:09:04.540 --> 00:09:06.790 thinking of them as orbiting around the nucleus. 00:09:06.790 --> 00:09:08.050 But that's not quite right. 00:09:08.050 --> 00:09:10.460 They don't orbit the way that a planet, say, 00:09:10.460 --> 00:09:11.710 orbits around the sun. 00:09:11.710 --> 00:09:13.900 But that's a good starting point. 00:09:13.900 --> 00:09:16.430 Another way is, they're kind of jumping around the nucleus, 00:09:16.430 --> 00:09:18.680 or they're buzzing around the nucleus. 00:09:18.680 --> 00:09:20.680 And that's just because reality just 00:09:20.680 --> 00:09:22.100 gets very strange at this level. 00:09:22.100 --> 00:09:24.183 And we'll actually have to go into quantum physics 00:09:24.183 --> 00:09:26.570 to really understand what the electron is doing. 00:09:26.570 --> 00:09:29.320 But a first mental model in your head 00:09:29.320 --> 00:09:32.740 is at the center of this atom, this carbon-12 atom, 00:09:32.740 --> 00:09:37.000 you have this nucleus, right over there. 00:09:37.000 --> 00:09:40.700 And these electrons are jumping around this nucleus. 00:09:40.700 --> 00:09:43.850 And the reason why these electrons don't just 00:09:43.850 --> 00:09:45.360 go off, away from this nucleus. 00:09:45.360 --> 00:09:47.570 Why they're kind of bound to this nucleus, 00:09:47.570 --> 00:09:49.860 and they form part of this atom, is 00:09:49.860 --> 00:09:54.570 that protons have a positive charge 00:09:54.570 --> 00:09:57.990 and electrons have a negative charge. 00:09:57.990 --> 00:10:01.874 And it's one of these properties of these fundamental particles. 00:10:01.874 --> 00:10:03.290 And when you start thinking about, 00:10:03.290 --> 00:10:04.690 well, what is a charge, fundamentally, 00:10:04.690 --> 00:10:05.481 other than a label? 00:10:05.481 --> 00:10:07.020 And it starts to get kind of deep. 00:10:07.020 --> 00:10:08.810 But the one thing that we know, when 00:10:08.810 --> 00:10:10.670 we talk about electromagnetic force, 00:10:10.670 --> 00:10:13.280 is that unlike charges attract each other. 00:10:13.280 --> 00:10:14.890 So the best way to think about it 00:10:14.890 --> 00:10:17.100 is, protons and electrons, because they 00:10:17.100 --> 00:10:19.990 have different charges, they attract each other. 00:10:19.990 --> 00:10:21.520 Neutrons are neutral. 00:10:21.520 --> 00:10:25.070 So they're really just sitting here inside of the nucleus. 00:10:25.070 --> 00:10:30.700 And they do affect the properties, on some level, 00:10:30.700 --> 00:10:33.330 for some atoms of certain elements. 00:10:33.330 --> 00:10:36.340 But the reason why we have the electrons not just flying off 00:10:36.340 --> 00:10:37.970 on their own is because, they are 00:10:37.970 --> 00:10:42.470 attracted towards the nucleus. 00:10:42.470 --> 00:10:45.690 And they also have an unbelievably high velocity. 00:10:45.690 --> 00:10:48.630 It's actually hard for-- and we start touching, once again, 00:10:48.630 --> 00:10:51.260 on a very strange part of physics 00:10:51.260 --> 00:10:54.380 once we start talking about what an electron actually is doing. 00:10:54.380 --> 00:10:56.780 But it has enough, I guess you could say, 00:10:56.780 --> 00:10:59.690 it's jumping around enough that it doesn't want to just fall 00:10:59.690 --> 00:11:04.520 into the nucleus, I guess is one way of thinking about it. 00:11:04.520 --> 00:11:08.220 And so I mentioned, carbon-12 right over here, 00:11:08.220 --> 00:11:09.820 defined by the number of protons. 00:11:09.820 --> 00:11:12.710 Oxygen would be defined by having eight protons. 00:11:12.710 --> 00:11:16.420 But once again, electrons can interact with other electrons. 00:11:16.420 --> 00:11:19.140 Or they can be taken away by other atoms. 00:11:19.140 --> 00:11:23.380 And that actually forms a lot of our understanding of chemistry. 00:11:23.380 --> 00:11:26.400 It's based on how many electrons an atom has, 00:11:26.400 --> 00:11:27.860 or a certain element has. 00:11:27.860 --> 00:11:29.580 And how those electrons are configured. 00:11:29.580 --> 00:11:33.990 And how the electrons of other elements are configured. 00:11:33.990 --> 00:11:36.490 Or maybe, other atoms of that same element. 00:11:36.490 --> 00:11:41.180 We can start to predict how an atom of one element 00:11:41.180 --> 00:11:43.360 could react with another atom of that same element. 00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:46.700 Or an atom of one element, how it could react, 00:11:46.700 --> 00:11:48.780 or how it could bond, or not bond, 00:11:48.780 --> 00:11:51.370 or be attracted, or repel, another atom 00:11:51.370 --> 00:11:52.630 of another element. 00:11:52.630 --> 00:11:55.230 So for example-- and we'll learn a lot more about this 00:11:55.230 --> 00:12:00.110 in the future-- it is possible for another atom, someplace, 00:12:00.110 --> 00:12:03.180 to swipe away an electron from a carbon, 00:12:03.180 --> 00:12:05.840 just because, for whatever reason. 00:12:05.840 --> 00:12:09.780 And we'll talk about certain elements, certain neutral atoms 00:12:09.780 --> 00:12:12.360 of certain elements, have a larger 00:12:12.360 --> 00:12:14.010 affinity for electrons than others. 00:12:14.010 --> 00:12:17.140 So maybe one of those swipes an electron away from a carbon, 00:12:17.140 --> 00:12:19.540 and then this carbon will be having 00:12:19.540 --> 00:12:21.730 less electrons than protons. 00:12:21.730 --> 00:12:25.370 So then it would have five electrons and six protons. 00:12:25.370 --> 00:12:28.152 And then it would have a net positive charge. 00:12:28.152 --> 00:12:30.110 So, in this carbon-12, the first version I did, 00:12:30.110 --> 00:12:33.170 I had six protons, six electrons. 00:12:33.170 --> 00:12:34.530 The charges canceled out. 00:12:34.530 --> 00:12:37.170 If I lose an electron, then I only have five of these. 00:12:37.170 --> 00:12:39.210 And then I would have a net positive charge. 00:12:39.210 --> 00:12:41.241 And we're going to talk a lot more about all 00:12:41.241 --> 00:12:42.990 of this throughout the chemistry playlist. 00:12:42.990 --> 00:12:44.200 But hopefully, you have an appreciation 00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:46.241 that this is already starting to get really cool. 00:12:46.241 --> 00:12:48.300 Once we can already get to this really, 00:12:48.300 --> 00:12:52.937 fundamental building block, called the atom. 00:12:52.937 --> 00:12:55.520 And what's even neater is that this fundamental building block 00:12:55.520 --> 00:12:58.800 is built of even more fundamental building blocks. 00:12:58.800 --> 00:13:00.630 And these things can all be swapped 00:13:00.630 --> 00:13:03.160 around, to change the properties of an atom, 00:13:03.160 --> 00:13:05.880 or to even go from an atom of one element 00:13:05.880 --> 00:13:08.466 to an atom of another element.