ELI5; why are we taught that atoms are the building blocks of matter when atoms are made up of smaller things?

Question

ELI5; why are we taught that atoms are the building blocks of matter when atoms are made up of smaller things?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Atoms are the smallest parts of an element that are still that element. An oxygen atom is still oxygen, and a sodium atom is still sodium.

Not only that, but they are the smallest pieces that you can easily divide an object into. (The word “atom” itself comes from the Greek for “not cut”.) Breaking an atom into its component particles permanently requires a particle accelerator, whereas you can typically separate the atoms of a piece of an element from one another with an ordinary knife or even your hands.

You can think of atoms as being like Lego bricks and subatomic particles as the molecules of plastic that the bricks are made of. Dismantling a Lego model is much easier than breaking the blocks up into molecules.

So just as Lego bricks are the building blocks of Lego models, atoms are the building blocks of matter.

EDIT: grammar, clarification