If you could magnify a single grain of table salt until it became as big as the Empire State Building, each atom in it would look only as big as the grain you started with! And if you could place eighty million molecules in a row like marbles, they would stretch only the distance of an inch.

Yet unbelievably small as they are, both atoms and molecules arrange themselves in distinctive patterns in different kinds of material. All the while, they are constantly moving in a wild zigzag that is measured in billions of bumps a second.

In fact, the things that happen in the fantastic world of the atom sometimes sound like the wildest science fiction. But they have been tested and are true beyond a doubt. For scientists have learned to weigh and split the atom. They have traced the dizzy course of the molecule. And they have used this information in developing the greatest source of power the world has ever known. Yet for most people the atom is a great mystery.

For them, Dr. Ira M. Freeman has written All About the Atom, a simple and dramatic explanation of the atom and how it works. With vivid examples, this distinguished physicist explains what things are made of, how energy makes things go and how the atom idea was developed.

Readers of all ages will be thrilled by this fascinating explanation of the wonders of the atom.

From the book