An Atom is a piece of business logic that implements the Process method of the Atom interface. Atoms are the primary workhorse of the Atomizer. Without their payload, known as Electrons, Atoms cannot be processed. A bonded Atom (i.e., instance) is an Atom that has been initialized with a valid Electron.
A Conductor is the “driver” that connects to message queues (or to in-memory caches or other communication frameworks) for passing processing payloads (i.e., Electrons) throughout the cluster. This driver implements the Conductor interface. For example, an Atom that connects to another Atom directly for processing requests could be a form of Conductor.
An Electron is the payload that is retrieved from the message queue or other communication processor. It contains data in the form of a byte slice (could be json, protobuf, or gob-encoded, etc...) that is then used to properly initialize an Atom. Essentially, the Electron is the configuration for the business logic that is internal to the Atom.