[JennyGracie (OP)]

Rehoboth wants to know,

Can an atom be destroyed?

What do you think?

[Halc]

Sure.  It's what happens all the time in nuclear reactions.  For instance, uranium gets destroyed in fission reactors, and hydrogen atoms are constantly being destroyed as the sun consumes them.  They're already not particularly atoms in the sun since the heat strips the electrons away, so it is actually just a bunch of hydrogen nuclei (protons) getting made into other things like neutrons and joining into new nuclei that are not hydrogen anymore.

Matter can also be more simply destroyed simply using antimatter.  An electron meeting a positron in the sun (a very frequent occurrence) results in both being destroyed.

[Bored chemist]

It's fair to say that the heart of the Sun or the middle of a nuclear reactor are pretty brutal conditions.
In most cases it's very hard to split atoms (though some are unstable and fall apart if you wait ).

[evan_au]

How difficult it is depends on how thoroughly you want to destroy the atom.
- At the easiest end of the scale, a copper wire consists of metal ions embedded in a sea of electrons. The slightest electrical charge, change in magnetic field, temperature change or vibration will cause the metal ion to be separated from its nearest electron. It's close location is replaced by another one from this sea of electrons, which is always sloshing to and fro. In a sense, the outer electrons of these copper atoms are not really attached to "its" atom at all, so these atoms fall apart all by themselves. But the embedded copper ion retains its chemical identity, and holds tightly to its inner electrons (not that you can tell two electrons apart).
- If you mix hydrogen and oxygen, and then introduce a spark, the atoms rearrange their electrons to produce water. This releases a fair amount of energy. It changes the molecular structure. But the atomic nuclei retain their chemical identities - just the electrons are shuffled.
- If you leave Uranium alone, the nucleus will spontaneously break down (fission) into smaller nuclei like iodine and cesium, plus a few neutrons. This changes the chemical identity of the nucleus, and redistributes the electrons. This releases a huge amount of energy.
- If you bombard an element with neutrons (eg in a nuclear reactor), some of them will stick, and the nucleus will change to a different chemical isotope, which could possibly decay into the nucleus of a heavier element, releasing a neutrino in the process. Large amounts of energy are typically involved in these reactions.