I recently had an email from Aiden in the USA who had been given a task by his teacher to make a model of Nitrogen Atom and he was looking for inspiration, he also thought he would challenge me as well. As many of you know I cannot resist a challenge so I immediately put on my thinking cap and fired up my brain cell to come up with this sculpture depicting a Nitrogen Atom.

Do a quick google search and you will see plenty of images of a nitrogen atom however I will explain my sculpture, the orange blobs are Protons of which there are 7, the yellow blobs are Neutrons, again there are 7 of them, the clear balloon surrounding the central cluster is the electron orbit and the 7 small red bubbles within each section of clear balloon represent the electrons.

I made my atom from 7 balloons (which is cool as the real atom is made from 7 of everything too), I used 2 x 350s to make the central cluster, 2 red x 260s to make the electrons and 3 clear 260s to make the electron orbit.

Rob very nice but as a phd chemist you need to have two external 's' orbitals. The first with 2 electrons and the 2nd with 5 electrons. Otherwise perfect. Ps I never make balloon chemistry models as chemists are weird and a stickle for details :-) :-)

ha ha, thanks Rob, I knew it would be wrong :-)  he he

so what's this then? have I discovered a new element? I name it magirobesium :-)

I was just asked to make an Atom and remembered seeing yours on this site.  So I'm going to give it a try.  Can I ask how you got it to float, did you use fishing line?

You hit the nail on the head, I have some VERY thin (magicians) invisible thread here (shock horror, magicians use invisible thread??? no never, its a lie, don't tell anyone  )

LOL, I won't tell...and Thanks.  It's for a science teacher, so I better get it right

Ok, if your making it for a Science teacher then make sure you DO get it right (unlike me)

I had a barrage of emails and comments letting me know the mistakes I made, he he,

So to Quote one Science teacher -

QuoteThe electrons should be in two rings. The inner orbital holds 2, the and the outer would have the remaining 5 (and they wouldn't actually be rings, but would be 3 dimensional "clouds," but for simplicity, rings are fine).

And to Quote another

QuoteThe Protons need to be red, the neutrons need to be green and the electrons need to be blue (like electricity)

Hope that helps

Thanks for all your input and help.  This is what I came up with and I used several different pictures of Atoms and of course they are all different, so I made up my own version of an Atom.  It is what it is

Thanks again!!!

Hi just wondering if anyone is up for a challenge. We could make from balloons a representative version of the periodic table of elements. I found this one http://deltabiology.com/download/printo ... ements.jpg and thought it could be fun. If we get enough people interested we could share elements, post them here and collate them and then edit them together to make a balloon version. Might be a good way to linking chemistry balloons and fun possibly some press for TBAG anyone interested?

You can count me in.  But you might find some tumble weed blowing past soon.  Where has everyone gone?

Thanks Thelma this could be fun if we can drum up the numbers. Sharing the elements out will mean we can get through them much quicker

I would be up for this

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Sounds fun. I am still here and up for a challenge (time permitting)  

I'll give it a go

Great we are bringing a periodic table team together!! Each element has has its own page here http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table with uses. I will try to post something for hydrogen tonight to get the ball rolling. We can then collate here but also I can collect them with a view to bringing them together. We should also make then chemical symbol with balloons as well.