"What are you looking at, Billy?" Emil asked when he found his best friend in the living room, looking through a magnifying (MAG-nih-fy-ing) glass at what appeared to be a blank piece of paper. Emil didn't see any writing on it. What was Billy looking at?
"Mandy told me that everything is made up of atoms (AH-tums)," Billy replied. "I thought maybe I could use the magnifying glass to see the atoms that make up this paper, because they are supposed to be very tiny. A magnifying glass makes tiny things easier to see."
As Emil climbed up on the stool next to Billy, Billy moved aside so the other doll could have a look. "It does look different," Emil said, "but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see."
"Let's go ask Mandy," Billy suggested. They both knew it was a Mandy question. "Maybe we aren't using the magnifying glass right."
The boys took the magnifying glass and paper, and climbed up the stairs to look for Mandy in the workroom, where they thought she would be playing with her yarn.
Mandy looked up when the boys came in. She was knitting, which was not a surprise. She was wearing her earbuds plugged into the iPad, apparently listening to a story or music or a podcast about knitting or music or science. "Hi!" she said when they appeared in the doorway.
"Hi!" both boys replied in unison."
"We have a Mandy question," Billy said, after the boys had climbed up to the table. "We've been looking at this piece of paper with this magnifying glass to see if I can see the atoms, but I'm not sure what I'm looking at. The paper does look different with the magnifying glass, but it's sort of all one thing, not a lot of little tiny things. We're not sure if we're seeing the atoms or not."
"Well," Mandy began, "that's because you can't see atoms with a magnifying glass, or even with a regular microscope (MY-kro-skope), which lets you see things that are much tinier than with a magnifying glass. A regular microscope can sit on a table when you use it."
She pulled the ear buds away from her ears and moved her glasses to the top of her head. She knew this conversation was going to take some time, but it was interesting, and she liked to talk about it.
"You can only see atoms with a special microscope," Mandy explained, "and then, you aren't really seeing the atoms the way you would see things like this yarn, for instance."
"Those microscopes are really very special, too," Mandy pointed out, "so they're much too expensive and much too big for someone to have in their house!"
"Gee," sighed Billy. "I really wanted to see what an atom looks like."
Both boys seemed disappointed.
"We may not be able to see an atom with out eyes," Mandy told them, "but we can see it with our minds. We know enough about atoms to be able to imagine them."
The boys looked more hopeful.
"You see," Mandy began, "We know there are parts to an atom. How many of each kind of part is what makes the difference between one thing and another, like my yarn and your piece of paper."
Mandy thought for a moment.
Then she said, "Just imagine an atom is a tiny solar system."
"I know what a solar system is," Emil exclaimed, happy to have something he knew about. "We learned about it in my class at school. It's a sun, like our sun, with planets going around it, like our Earth!"
"Like Mars!" Billy added, excited now, "or Jupiter (JOO-pih-ter)."
"Right," Mandy agreed, "only instead of a sun in the center, an atom has a nucleus (NOO-klee-us). Nucleus is a special word for the center of something. It's used in science for atoms, as well as some other things."
"Let me find a picture," Mandy suggested, "to show you what we think an atom looks like, so you can imagine it in your head." She reached for the iPad and opened it up.
In just a few seconds, she had the picture she wanted.
"Here!" she said, turning the tablet so the boys could see. "This is what an atom should look like if we see it with our minds."
"Here's the nucleus," she said, pointing to the thing in the center. "In this picture, the nucleus looks like a clump of balls all stuck together."
"Those little balls," Mandy explained, "are parts of the atom. The blue ones are called protons. The Red ones are called neutrons. They aren't really red or blue. They just have those colors in this drawing, so we can tell them apart."
"The protons have what's called a positive (PAW-zih-tiv) charge," she told them. "That's the name given to a type of electricity. They use a plus sign (+) as a symbol (SIHM-bul) to show that it's positive, because we use a plus sign for adding numbers."
"The other little balls," Mandy went on, "the red ones, those have no charge. We say they're neutral (NEW-trul), because they are neither positive nor negative. We don't need a symbol for that, because it isn't either one."
"What's negative?" Emil asked. "It doesn't sound happy."
"You're right," Mandy said. "We say our feelings are positive if we're happy and negative if we're sad. Those expressions come from how we talk about electricity, but there's nothing sad about this kind of negative."
Mandy pointed to the little green balls outside the nucleus in the drawing. "These green balls," she said, "are electrons (ee-LEK-trons). They have a negative charge. Scientists use a minus sign (-) for negative, because we use it to subtract or take away numbers in arithmetic. It doesn't mean they're sad. In fact," she added, "these lines are there to show where the electrons go flying around the nucleus. What fun that must be!"
"It's like they're in orbit around the nucleus!" Billy exclaimed. "Now I see why you said the atom is like a little solar system! The planets in our solar system are in orbit around the sun."
Mandy nodded. "Not all atoms have the same number of protons, neutrons and electrons," she said. "Atoms form substances called elements (EL-a-mints). Each element has a different number of each of these parts. It's what makes them different from each other."
"I think we should stop now," Mandy suggested. "If I tell you more than you can remember at one time, everything in your head will probably just drain down through your neck and out through your knee joints. Besides, this story is long enough.
"I won't forget what I learned just now," Emil said, "but I learned something that isn't just about atoms." The other two dolls looked at him. They wanted to know what else he had learned.
Emil knew that when someone just looks at you after you just said something, that meant they were waiting for you to say more. "Just because we can't see something," he said, "doesn't mean it isn't there.
"That's right!" Mandy exclaimed, happy that Emil had learned something unexpected from the little lesson.
Billy picked up the magnifying glass again. "Let's go down to the kitchen. Let's look and find out if we can see some cookies," he suggested.
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
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