ShmoopTube

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:02

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by ions.

00:05

They're all charged up.

00:07

Like when we chugged that two liter of Mountain Dew.

00:09

Yeah. That's what happens to you.

00:11

An ion is formed when... what?

00:14

And here are our potential atoms... uh, answers.

00:18

[ mumbles ]

00:19

Okay, getting right into it. The best answer here is C.

00:22

An ion is formed when an atom gains or loses an electron.

00:26

That's great, but why is it the answer?

00:29

That's why we're here, right?

00:30

Otherwise, we'd just be watching funny cat videos

00:32

on YouTube. The cat on a roomba? Classic.

00:35

An ion is an atom that has a positive or negative electric charge.

00:40

And just knowing that gives us enough info to eliminate D.

00:43

Two atoms that are chemically joined make a molecule, not an ion.

00:47

An atom has a nucleus which contains protons

00:50

and neutrons. Outside of the nucleus,

00:53

electrons are zipping around.

00:55

Well, protons are positively charged,

00:57

electrons are negatively charged, and neutrons are, well,

01:01

neutral. Get the "neut" in there? Yeah.

01:03

In a normal, non-ionized atom,

01:05

there are as many electrons as there are protons,

01:08

so the charges balance themselves out and the atom has no net charge.

01:12

Now how would an atom get out of balance?

01:14

Well, neutrons aren't gonna make a difference because they don't

01:17

have a charge in the first place. So we can get rid of option B.

01:20

We can also eliminate A.

01:22

The nucleus of an atom is pretty strong,

01:24

and in order to change the nucleus of an atom, you need

01:26

a huge amount of force. And if you do manage to pull it apart

01:29

or push more protons into it, well, you can end up with

01:32

a really big bang. Yeah.

01:35

But electrons, relatively speaking, are further away from the nucleus

01:38

and, out there, sometimes another atom comes along and swipes one of them up.

01:42

And, sometimes, an atom picks up a stray electron in the process

01:45

and it decides to hang out there for a while, like when

01:48

our cousin Ricky came for a weekend and stayed on our couch for six months.

01:51

So to bring us back to the beginning, an ion is a charged atom.

01:54

We're gonna stick with option C, because gaining or losing an electron

01:57

is what gives an atom a positive or negative charge.

02:00

We're gonna try to skip the caffeine for a few days.

02:02

We've seen our little cousin take a sip of coffee and, trust us,

02:04

there's, uh, such thing as being too charged up.

02:08

Settle down, settle down...

Full Transcript