Atoms: God's Fingerprints
Our world is amazing. And when you think about how everything is made up of tiny invisible atoms, it almost blows your mind! And then you think about how atoms are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons... Wow. So let's talk a little bit about the atom, and what it is.
It's a ball, with swirling things on the outside, that have spheres on them too. Well, it's quite a bit more than that.
The centre ball, is called the nucleus. It's made up of positively charged protons, and neutral neutrons. [Their name makes it pretty obvious that they're neutral.] So the tiny red balls would be protons, and the blue ones would be neutrons. Now the spheres that are swirling around this all are called electrons, they're negatively charged. The orbital lines just represent the different energy layers.
What happens when you change the number of protons, neutrons, and electrons in an atom? Well, it changes into a different element. I'm sure you've heard of the periodic table, which shows all the different elements that everything is made up of. Elements are the different materials which things are made of. For example oxygen is a element, and hydrogen, and when you hook one oxygen and two hydrogens together you get H2O which is water! So back to atoms.
We cannot see atoms, because their wavelengths are thousands of times smaller than the wavelengths of light (which is what we can see). Yeah, they're really tiny, to put it in perspective, one piece of hair is a million carbon atoms wide. Isn't it amazing how we can know so much about them, when we can't even see them? Oh did I mention, we also know some rules they have!There are different layers that electrons rest on. The first layer can only have two electrons on it, and the rest of the layers can only have eight on them. That's just one of the basic rules.
It turns out that the model we think of when we hear atom, isn't so accurate as we thought. We of course cannot be 100% sure what an atom looks like, because we can't see them, but there is a new model of an atom. This new model is called the electron cloud model. This is pictured above.
There is a new device called a Quantum microscope, which scientists have now been using to take pictures of atoms. So although you and I cannot see atoms, not with our eyes anyway, and probably not with the microscope because we don't have one. Well, I don't have one, and you probably don't either. But we have for the first time ever, been able to see a picture of this mysterious, amazing atom.Isn't it amazing? Everything we see is made up of this tiny thing? Our Creator sure had an amazing way of designing everything. Everything is orderly, and perfect. Doesn't seem like something that evolved out of chaos to me?
Did the Bible tell us about atoms, long before we even had any idea about them? Hebrews 11:3 seem to say that everything is made out of atoms.
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. Hebrews 11:3Our God is an amazing God, who created the world out of these tiny particles. He made everything orderly, and perfect, and the more we learn about creation, the more we see this. Atoms are just another example of this. With the advance of scientific equipment we can finally see these particles, which were mentioned hundred of years ago in the Bible, Atoms: God's fingerprints.
"For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:16-17).