MadSci Network: Physics
Query:

Re: What is the definition of empty space within the atom and between atoms?

Date: Fri Jun 23 16:29:12 2000
Posted By: Paula Turner, Faculty, physics, Kenyon College
Area of science: Physics
ID: 961099983.Ph
Message:

A very trustworthy website with the information you seek is: http://wwwpdg.cern.ch/pdg/cpep/adventure_home.html
This is the homepage for the Particle Adventure, produced by high energy
particle physicists of the Particle Data Group at Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory.  If you want numbers, they give them:

the size of an atom is about one angstrom (10E-10 m); 
the size of a nucleus inside an atom is a few femtometers (few 10E-15 m);  
the size of an electron is *less than* an attometer (10E-18 m).  

I highlight that "less than" because, as far as we can tell from current
high energy particle experiments, the electron may have NO literal size
(that is, its diameter may be ZERO).  What it means for a particle to have
mass and momentum without having size, I'll leave for a philosopher :)

Using those numbers, we can calculate another pictoral model.  Since the
electron may have NO size, let's start with the nucleus.  If we imagine a
nucleus the size of a marble (say 1.5 to 2.5 cm), an atom would be
something like 1.5 km (about one mile) across.  The electrons would be
smaller than 5 micrometers (5 times 10E-6 m)in size.  Typical human hair is
50 to 100 micrometers, so the electrons would be smaller than a tenth of
that.  Remember, I always say "smaller than" because it could be that the
electrons have no physical diameter at all!


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