Particle emitters are great!  You can create, smoke, fog, fire, burst of sparks, etc. Because particles are just a little 2D image, its less costly for the computer to render. That means you can but tens, hundreds, even thousands times more particles in your space at one time than 3D objects without slowing down the frame rate. This can give all kinds of different effects.  Lets take an overview look at Particle Emitters. 

• Undock the Toolbox Panel
• Choose emitters in the upper listbox and Particle Emitter in the lower listbox.
• Click to place the Particle Emitter in the space
• Right-click to exit Draw Mode.
  • Hit Play to View the default Particle being emitted
  • The default particle is basically a small faded-edged white-ish circle, spanning full transparency on its far edges, translucency at its edge to full opacity at its center. 
  • Thousands of these particles at once will look like a snowy cloud (which, if you think about it, is also just many overlapping, slightly translucent particles also) 
  • You can choose any texture to be a particle and make your own in graphics editor.  

Overview of changeable particle emitter properties and their effects: 

• Undock the Property panel in the top right
• Select Particle Emitter on the left panel
  • Rate Of Emission

• This how quickly are the particles being emitted / on what pulse rate are the    
• Select Continuous in the right panel
  • Select the underlined ConstantPulse
• This will bring you to the Constant Pulse property editor pane
• Change Frequency on the right panel. 
  • Frequency is times per second.
• Physics
• This changes the effects of gravity and wind etc.
• Changing the randomness magnitude will influence how much force each individual particle will receive
• Changing Mass will increase or decrease the mass of each particle
• Changing Wind causes the particles to be subject to different X forces
• Lifetime
  
  • This will Influence the length of time a Particle remains in existence