Ray Levesque age 11, Ottawa, Canada,, for his question:

What is an atom?

These days, talk is full of atoms and what the atom can do. Actually, the world and everything in it is made of atoms, Ninety odd different kinds of atom are the building blocks of everything we see. Each atom is the smallest possible part of an element, An atom of gold could be no smaller than it is$ otherwise it would not be gold,

All atoms are made of tiny electrical particles. Some of the particles, protons, are charged with positive electricity, Some, electrons,: are charged with negative electricity, The neutrons are electrically neutral. Each different atom has a different number of these particles. The protons and the neutrons are bunched together in the core, or nucleus, of the atom. The electrons are arranged in shells around the nucleus. The number of protons equals the number of electrons. So any normal atom is electrically neutral.