With break over, its time for work again. In class we are starting a new unit on electricity. It may sound broad and simple but as we slowly progress into the unit things layout to be a little more confusing than I thought they would be. The basics of electricity starts with a charge. In an atom as most people may already know, it contains protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons are positively charged parts, electrons are negatively charged and neutrons contain no charge. Atoms in their elemental state have equal protons and electrons and have no charge, but when an atom takes an electron from another atom then it becomes charged. When this happens, the products are called ions. Positively charged atoms are cations and negatively charged atoms are anions. Obviously a charge can be positive(+) or negative(-) and this depends on what happens within a reaction. When atoms give up, or take electrons from another atom the atom that gives up the electron becomes positively charged and the atom that gains an electron becomes negatively charged. That is the basics of charge. We learned that unlike charges attract and like charges repel. We did a lab that helps us to see that and learn how things become statically charged and how things react when they are charged. The picture above shows an example of the lab. When you rip pieces of tape off of a table it becomes charged and the reaction shown is that they are attracted to each other. When I went home I re-did it and asked myself more questions about charges. The lab gave me a better understanding of things. When I see a reaction of electricity caused by negatively and positively charged atoms I start to think of which object is positive and which is negative. I start to ask more questions to myself and I try to figure out how each object got its charge and what reactions occurred within it to make it that way.