 We're going to start out looking at the protons. Protons nicely are positively charged particles. They're positively charged particles found in the nucleus of the atom. All atoms have a nucleus. And protons are one of the things you're going to find in the nucleus. Is it the only thing in the nucleus? No, it's the blue thing in the nucleus. So we actually have three protons in this atom that we're looking at right here. What are the red things? Well, they're not protons. So we'll look at those in a second. And what are these little black things? Oh, those aren't protons either. They're positively charged structures in the nucleus of my atom. The nucleus is the center. All right. Protons are interesting because they actually define the characteristics of the atom itself. So let's make a note of that. That's why they're significant. That's why we care. Protons, the number of protons in the nucleus defines characteristics of the atom. So all atoms that have the same number of protons in their nucleus are the same element. What? Elements share the same number of protons. Okay, did you follow that? Every single atom, if you look at it and you see that it has, oh, three protons, it's a certain element. And I'm going to show you what elements, like how, what? Really? How do you figure that out? Not there, here, not there, there. That's what I wanted to show. What is that? Does that look familiar? Heck, yes, it does. This is the periodic table of elements. Elements, and each one of these boxes represents like a flavor of atom. So go ahead and take a wild guess. Take a look at this hydrogen atom here. How many protons do you think are in a hydrogen atom? There's a giant hint right there by my arrow. It's number one. How'd you know? There's a one on it. Dogs, how else would you know? Talk to me about my friend Helium over here. How many protons are in the nucleus of a Helium atom? Dude, two. Number two, okay, go for a pedimonium or whatever that is. 46 dog pounds, easy peasy. You look for the number, the atomic number, tells you how many protons they have. Tell me this, how many protons are in a carbon atom? Six. Tell me this, if we took a carbon atom and we took a proton out, is it still a carbon atom? No, because now it only has five protons. So I don't care what else you change. You keep everything the same. You can totally mix it all up, but the number of protons tells you the atom. You will not have to memorize the periodic table of elements. And anybody who ever makes you memorize that, I would love to hear the justification for such a thing. In the day, people used to have to memorize it, tragic. Thank you, we don't have to memorize it. However, you will need to be able to interpret it. So if I said to you, tell me the element that has 42 protons, you're going to go look and look and look and for the number 42, don't know. That's like malibidibium or something like that. And you can just say, no, that's cool with me. Sometimes it'll tell you its name in there somewhere and you can give me the full name if you want. But I will never ask you questions like that without you having access to a periodic table. But I do want you to know that the periodic, that the number of protons in the atom determines the nature of the element itself. All right, I think that that's totally cool. I think we're good for protons. So let's take a look at our neutrons, which are down in the nucleus, but they are different than protons.