Читать книгу Aromatherapy Workbook - Shirley Price - Страница 35

The building blocks of the universe! Every atom has a nucleus containing one or more protons, which are electrically positive, and one or more neutrons, which are neutral. Around the outside, depending on the particular atom, there are one or more electrons, each of which carries a negative electrical charge. These electrons are whizzing round and round the nucleus, rather like the earth orbits around the sun – ceaseless, never still. See Figure 3.1.

FIGURE 3.1: Hydrogen atom

The electrons orbit the nucleus at various distances from it. To feel really happy, the atom likes to have two electrons in the first ‘orbit’ (called a shell) around the nucleus – the second and further orbits or shells like to have eight.

As you can see from the diagram, a hydrogen atom is short of one electron – oxygen is short of two and carbon is short of no less than four! So each searches for and joins with other atoms capable of sharing electrons and therefore satisfactorily completing the number necessary for its stability. The atom is then content!

A simpler way to represent the ‘discontented’ or unstable atoms is to give them ‘arms’, i.e. – and =. These arms are called ‘bonds’ because they unite one atom to another.