Hi, I'm Steve Jones and I'm going to tell you a little bit about protons. Now, protons are one of what we call the three fundamental particles. Don't worry about all of the other, nearly a hundred, fundamental particles that exist nowadays, this is good enough for us to understand the basics of what elements and materials are about. Everything is made up of these three, protons, neutrons, electrons. Now, the proton, which is our subject at the moment, is a positively charged particle. It has a positive charge. There is a negatively charged particle, the electron, but we're interested in the proton at the moment. And the proton is very important. Because, all matter is based on the number of these that it contains. So for example, if I'm looking at a proton, I've got to get an idea of the size. How big is it? Now an atom, here is an atom, consists of a nucleus, in which there are protons and neutrons, and a surrounding area in which there are electrons. Now, here's an idea of how big it is. There's two lines. And there are a hundred million atoms between those two, end to end. Atoms are not big. And what is more, the proton in the middle of this atom, actually only takes up something like, one-ten thousandth of the diameter of the atom. So, protons are very, very small. But, these particles determine what material this is. Actually, this atom here, as you can see, the one you can see, contains a proton, a neutron and one electron. This atom actually is hydrogen, although it's a special kind of hydrogen called hydrogen 2, which is also called deuterium, and is heavy hydrogen. It exists naturally. You can also have ordinary hydrogen, which doesn't have this neutron. But that gives you an idea of how big the proton is. It's the number of protons in here that dictates what type of material it is. If there are six protons, than it will be carbon. So the atom will be carbon. And we know carbon, because soot is carbon, diamond is carbon. Different forms. So if it's got six protons, then it's carbon, and so on. In fact, the maximum number of protons you can have in a nucleus, is around a hundred. Anymore than that, and the thing just falls apart far too quickly. Even if it has a hundred, it's still not very stable, and doesn't last long. In that case, if it's not stable, we say it is radioactive. So, protons exist in the nucleus, they are very, very small, and they dictate, they tell us what kind of material we are dealing with.
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