By Medea Kakachia, USAID/Georgia Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Office

Let’s think about Hydrogen; why is it so different from its neighbor in the periodic table, Helium? – offered Mrs. Nona Chitanava, the 8^th grade chemistry teacher, at one of the first chemistry classes in our lives in September 1979.  Last week, we already had a hard time understanding that an electron is a particle revolving on its own orbital around the nucleus, but it could not be “allocated” anywhere on this orbital at any given time; it could have been found everywhere on its orbital at any time. THIS did not sound anything like anything we knew around us.  We were shocked, surprised, lost … And now, we needed to figure out how these “non-particle particles” made a difference in forming a matter. 

Do you want to explain it together with me? – Mrs. Nona called me up, as if she read in my eyes that my mind had already accepted for a fact something that could not always be explained.  On the blackboard with a white chalk we drew together the electron shell of Helium, then the electron shell of Hydrogen. 

“I do not know why, but it seems like this one more orbital with one more electron makes a difference,” I made an obvious conclusion when I saw the product, the two different atoms next to each other. “And it does not matter where the electron sits on the orbital, if it sits on that orbital,” I added, to express my own “compromise” with the “non-particle particle.”

The chemistry journey of my classmates began at this class! We started discovering the atoms of metals, transition metals, halogens, and noble gasses together with Mrs. Nona.  We talked about atoms in the classroom, during breaks, at home. If there were competitions between the schools then, I believe many of my classmates would be among the first in Chemistry in Georgia! We carried this irrational love of science throughout our lives, and many of us became biologists, medical doctors, and chemists. Every time we meet, years after we finished school, Mrs. Nona Chitanava is the first person we mention and praise and love for what we experienced as a mysterious journey through the world of atoms in our young lives.