What does an atom look like for a 8th grade standard?
Visible light has a wavelength that is much bigger than atoms. It is impossible to make out small details of objects by probing them with waves of large size — the waves simply flow around the small object. Shorter-wavelength light may be used, but the energy per photon increases as the wavelength shortens. As it turns out, when the light has a wavelength comparable to the size of the atom or smaller, it has enough energy to change the atom by moving the electrons around. This is one consequence of Heisenberg s Uncertainty Principle. We cannot say where the electrons are and how fast they are moving at the same time, and hence we cannot draw a picture with a little electron on one place sitting on a circular orbit. The fuzzy picture at the bottom of the page linked to is closer to the truth, describing the probabilities of finding electrons, depending on where you look for them. The nucleus, containing protons and neutrons, has a similar problem, but it is much much smaller than the e
