Eli5 why is that an atom is 99,6 % empty space ?

Question

Eli5 why is that an atom is 99,6 % empty space ?

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Answer 1

Our concepts of what constitutes empty space kind of breaks on the subatomic level. People imagine electrons and nuclei as planets orbiting a sun with empty space between them. This is generally wrong. A lot of the ways we talk about electrons’ behavior is allegorical and based on models. The don’t actually orbit the nucleus, but are somewhere within a probabilistic area around it. And until we find them they’re sort of everywhere in that range. Subatomic particles don’t really have a size the same way that planets do either, but that goes beyond Eli5.