hi I'm Josh and this is the science classroom in this video we're going to talk about how to draw a board diagram here's the kind of question you would need to solve for your chemistry class draw a board diagram for silicon a board diagram is a representation of electrons around the nucleus of an atom it's based on the bore model of the atom the bore model isn't the best representation but it can at least give an approximation of how many electrons are in the outermost energy level known as the veent shell first we draw in the nucleus the nucleus is where the prot and neutrons are located I'm going to include these amounts in the nucleus not all chemistry teachers will require this information but I always recommend you add it here silicon has 14 protons I know that because its atomic number is 14 it also has 14 neutrons I know that because I round the atomic weight to the nearest whole number this represents the number of protons and neutrons added together it's called the mass number so if I subtract the number of protons from this mass number then I know the number of neutrons now I can show the electrons in the board diagram the electrons are drawn as little circles on a ring each ring can hold a certain maximum number of electrons the first ring can hold two and then each ring after that can hold eight so let's start drawing in the 14 electrons for silicon here's the first ring it can hold two electrons I'll draw them like this then I'll draw another ring this holds eight it's usually good practice to draw them in pairs like this so I've drawn 10 electrons there's just four left so I'll draw in one more ring and place the last four dots on this ring I'm going to space them out on all four sides like this you don't technically have to do this spacing but it's kind of the best practice to give symmetry for the diagram now to check our work just count up all the dots there's 14 and that matches the atomic number of silicon thanks for watching if this video helped you out please give it a like And subscribe to the channel