since that's most of the size of an atom and where the interesting stuff happens.

And then you move up from there

Oh, like valence electrons and shit

Size not mass btw*

I know that all atoms want to have either 2 or 8 valence electrons

Yeah. They just want to occupy the lowest energy state possible

And that's when they have a neutral charge

I will probably add "learning chemistry" somewhere on my to-do list

So they will give up an electron or two or gain one if that's what it takes to be neutral

But it sounds like something requiring putting some effort

Yeah, and they share these electrons with other atoms

Which is why if you go across the table by group number, there are certain atoms that will usually show up in nature with a certain charge.

Which I've posted before.

But I will post again cuz it's cool

I really used to like chemistry back in midschool

I sometimes miss these classes

I mean, I still have math and physics

But with chemistry it would be just perfect

I sucked at chemistry in HS

It was interesting without the math parts I struggled with.

Although I would probably do a lot better now.

Math is easy

Most of it is boring

But at least it's easy and you don't have to put any effort into that

All the metals have a variable charge and readily give up electrons to become cations

So you don't have to really keep track of them

But the main group elements all have a charge they will take on to stabilize the atom.

I got straight 50s in math until I was 20 and went back to college to upgrade my shitty high school grades.

Once I learned programming, math was ezpz

Which was dumb that programming made more sense to me than math did and I ended up working backwards to git gud at math

What does "50s" mean?

Sometimes with math all it takes is just taking off from it and then relearning it.

50/100

Like a percentage scale?

Oh

Ok

A 50 is the minimum passing grade

It should be here too tbh

I literally learn math on tests

It's like
Okay, I don't know a shit about all this "combinatorics" thing, but I'll figure it out, right?