 Atoms are the building blocks of matter. Your books, your pencils, your clothes, and even the air made of atoms. Atoms are extremely small. It cannot be seen with a naked eye or even a magnifying glass. The word atom comes from the ancient Greek word atomis which means indivisible. For example, if you take a block of gold and chop it in half, chop it in half again and again and again for a very very long time you would eventually get to a point where you can cut no more and be left with the smallest piece of gold possible and the individual gold atom. Think of the block of gold as a room of balloons. If you halve the number of balloons in the room, halve it again and again and keep doing this till you eventually end up with just one balloon and then you cut the last balloon. Does it still function as a balloon? No, the same can be said about atoms. If I were to halve the last atom of gold it would no longer be gold. Soon atom is the smallest unit of an element having all the characteristics of that element.