Why does increasing or decreasing the number of protons (as you move about the periodic table) drastically change how elements look and behave. How is it with slightly different quantities of the same thing get you from gold to salt to helium? Are those atomic particles really are there is to matter?
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Consider a Lego brick; just by changing the number of pegs you can pretty drastically change the number of different ways that it can connect to other bricks.
Chemistry works similarly; the number of protons dictates the number of electrons each atom has, which in turn affects the number of connections that specific kind of atom tends to make.
So, with say Water (H2O) you’ve got a couple 1-peg bricks of Hydrogen attached to a single 2-peg brick of Oxygen.
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