A Quote by Sam Kean

If you had to sum up chemistry in one sentence, it might be this: Atoms need to have full shells of electrons to feel satisfied, and different elements steal, shed, or borrow different numbers of electrons to achieve a full shell.

Sam Kean

Quote Topics

Achieve Atoms Borrow Chemistry Different Electrons Elements Feel Full Had Might Need Numbers One Sentence Satisfied Sentence Shed Shell Shells Steal Sum Up

Quote Author

Sam Kean
American - Writer

Atoms have a nucleus, made of protons and neutrons bound together. Around this nucleus shells of electrons spin, and each shell is either full or trying to get full, to balance with the number of protons-to balance the number of positive and negative charges. An atom is like a human heart, you see.

Kim Stanley Robinson

Atoms consist of a positive nucleus and negative electrons flying around outside it. Electrons closest to the nucleus feel a strong negative-on-positive tug, and the bigger atoms get, the bigger the tug. In really big atoms, electrons whip around at speeds close to the speed of light.

Sam Kean

So if we're all quarks and electrons ..." he begins. What?" We could make love and it would be nothing more than quarks and electrons rubbing together." Better than that," I say. "Nothing really 'rubs together' in the microscopic world. Matter never really touches other matter, so we could make love without any of our atoms touching at all. Remember that electrons sit on the outside of atoms, repelling other electrons. So we could make love and actually repel each other at the same time.

Scarlett Thomas

The chemist in America has in general been content with what I have called a loafer electron theory. He has imagined the electrons sitting around on dry goods boxes at every corner [viz. the cubic atom], ready to shake hands with, or hold on to similar loafer electrons in other atoms.

Robert Andrews Millikan

Atoms of Element 118 fill an outer shell with electrons, creating a special type of element called a noble gas. Noble gases are natural turning points on the table, ending one row and pointing to the next.

Sam Kean

When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there, but levitating above it at a height of one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimetre), your electrons and its electrons implacably opposed to any closer intimacy.

Bill Bryson

I knew chemistry would be worse, because I'd seen a big card of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them.

Sylvia Plath

Without electrons, there is no Google. And without clean electrons, there will be no Google customers, since we'll all be too busy fleeing from rising seas, droughts, and disease.

Jeff Goodell

Yes, Jenna, I love you with all my heart. And with my atoms and molecules and electrons and whatever further breakdown you require.

Sharon Shinn

There are many ways of knocking electrons out of atoms. The simplest is to rub two surfaces together.

Fred Hoyle

In fact, we started off with two or three different shells and the shell had life of its own.

Ken Thompson

When a photon comes down, it interacts with electrons throughout the glass, not just on the surface. The photon and electrons do some kind of dance, the net result of which is the same as if the photon hit only on the surface.

Richard P. Feynman

Not sense data or atoms or electrons or packets of energy, but purposes, interests, and meanings, constitute the underlying facts of human experience.

Lewis Mumford

My music is more like ghetto gospel; there's a message in my words, so people listen. Sometimes you might here different things; it depends on how you feel. You might feel down, and I might be the cat in the same sentence saying, "You need to get up and do your thing." And then I could be the same cat, when you at the top of your game, telling you, "It feel good, don't it?" but with the same words.