To understand the world around us And know the cosmos with less doubt To comprehend that there is something Instead of nothingness throughout If we're to make sense of it all Ask the "why" that matters most We should turn our focus inward To the smallest things that we can know For centuries great thinkers pondered How this world could be comprised Is there an underlying constant To the world before our eyes Ancient greeks proposed a particle So infinitely small And they called these constructs atoms The smallest things of all From the structure of the atom All the elements are known And from elements come molecules As chemistry has shown First a nucleus sits densely In the center of a sphere And its core is protons bound to neutrons The atom's mass is mainly here About the nucleus buzz particles That are vastly smaller still Electrons with their minus charge In their orbitals they spin at large