Session 1: Atoms – the building blocks of matter

Introduction

Atoms are the basic building blocks of all the substances around you, rather like letters are used to construct words and hence a language. And a look ‘inside’ an atom is perhaps your best starting point when studying chemistry for the first time. As you will learn from this course, it’s the components of the atom that are crucial to understanding how substances behave in chemical reactions, and the behaviour of particles on the atomic (and sub-atomic) scale is often not what you would expect.