The smallest particles on a beach are found closest to the shoreline and many of those small grains of sand are carried into the sea with the waves. The coarser grains of sand are what actually builds up the beach.
If an element were broken down into its smallest particles, you would get atoms of that element. Each atom is the smallest unit of an element that retains the properties of that element.
You probably mean the smallest part of an atom. That would be an electron, because electrons are the particles making up atoms that are smallest in size.
Atoms are indeed very small, but there are even smaller particles that make up atoms, such as protons, neutrons, and electrons. These subatomic particles are the building blocks of atoms and are themselves much smaller than atoms.
The smallest basic particle of an element is an atom. Atoms and molecules formed of them are the smallest particles that have the physical and chemical properties of the element. Atoms, however, are made of smaller particles: electrons, protons, and neutrons, of which the electron is the smallest. There are various supplementary particles that connect or interact with them (e.g. mesons). These atomic particles are formed by the combination of constituent particles called quarks, which do not normally exist in uncombined forms (where, oddly, they would have much greater mass than the particles they constitute).
If table salt were separated into the smallest possible particles, it would yield sodium and chloride ions. This breakdown occurs through the process of dissociation, which means that the ionic bond holding the sodium and chloride ions together is broken, resulting in individual ions.
If the substance is an element, the smallest will be an atom. If it is a compound, then that would be a molecule.
For an element, it would be an atom. For a molecular substance, it would be a molecule. If it is an ionic compound, it would be a formula unit.
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People would say yes. But actually, no. Neutrino is nearly 20 times smaller.
No. The smallest particle of an element that has the properties of that element is an atom.
An electron is not the largest part of an atom. An electron is the smallest component of an atom. Relatively, if a neutron or proton were 1 unit in size, an electron would be 1/1840 units in size.
The smallest particles in the world, like subatomic particles such as electrons, neutrinos, and quarks, have incredibly small masses. For example, the mass of an electron is approximately 9.11 x 10^-31 kilograms.