MadSci Network: Physics |
In fact, your periodic table is correct. In it’s natural state, osmium does have a density of 22.59 g/cm, while lead has a density of 11.34 g/cm. However, if we were to isolate a single atom of osmium, it would indeed weigh less than lead. So does osmium have a greater density than lead even though it weighs less? First we have to understand that denisty rarely depends on the number of protons, nuetrons, and electrons and atom has; to answer this question fully we have to look at everything from a microscopic point of view. When you think of the word crystal, you might think of something like a diamond, or salt, or quartz. These substances have definite “crystal” looking structure from a macroscopic point of view – that is, you don’t need a microscope or complicated equipment to tell you that these items have crystal structure. Metals are a bit different because we can shape them however we want, but their crystal structure still remains even thought you can't see it with the unaided eye (you can check this by placing a metal coin under a microscope – at sufficiently high power you should be able to see defects on the surface that result from the crystal structure). Now to answer your question: Lead is less dense than osmium because of the way their atoms exist in their crystal structures. Lead crystallizes in what is called a face centered cubic structure (defined below), and osmium crystallizes in what is called hexagonal close-packed structure. Both of these crystals allow the lead and osmium atoms to occupy 74% of the space available, the remaining 26% is empty space (to visualize this, think of a glass filled with marbles, which symbolize atoms – the marbles cannot fill all the space in the glass, there will always be some empty space left just as there is empty space in atomic crystals). Since both osmium and lead occupy the same amount of space in their crystal structures, there must be an additional reason for osmium being more dense despite its lower atomic mass. The final piece to the puzzle comes from the fact that osmium has a smaller atomic radius (1.34 angstroms) than lead (1.75 angstroms). This means that given the exact same space, we can fit more osmium atoms than lead atoms – which in turn leads to a great density for osmium. You might be wondering exactly what the crystal structures for lead and osmium look like. The face centered cubic structure for lead is probably the easiest to visualize. Think of a cube. At each of the eight corners is centered one lead atom, and at each of the six faces lies another six atoms. The hexagonal close-packed crystal structure is a bit more difficult to describe without using graphics, so you might want to refer to the website listed below. Click on an element and a new page will appear with information on that element. A menu can be found on the left side of the element page; simply scroll down and look for the “crystal structure” link. Clicking on that should give you data, including graphics, on what the crystal structure looks like. http:// www.webelements.com/webelements/index.html I hope this helps!
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