Eli5 why is that an atom is 99,6 % empty space ?
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You know how like magnets repel each other. I can show you that on a table if you’re not familiar. Well atoms are like a big magnet with a little strong magnet zipping around it, like we were spinning for a hammer throw. The magnets are so powerful and the “spinninning here is so fast that we wind up looking at the average of where it is like when the tasmanian devil spins, and a lot of the stuff in the middle is kinda empty because it’s mostly the little magnet that matters.
Because electrons and protons are very small but the influence of their electric charges is far bigger than their size.
No real reason why, but I’ll disagree with people who say the space isn’t empty. The next thing you should look up is a neutron star to see what happens when that empty space disappears.
Most simply put, electrons orbit really far away from the center of the atom. The outer boundary of where the electrons orbit is what we consider the outer edge of the atom.
There may be no reason that humans can know as to why it’s mostly empty space. It’s a little like asking why the surface of the earth is 70% water – that’s just the way it is.
I wonder if you’re asking *how* an atom can act or feel solid when it is mostly empty space. The answer to this (as I understand) is the electro-magnetic force. Atoms don’t have to be solid throughout in order to rest on each other or be non-permeable. Instead, they connect and repel through their electrons. When two non-bonded atoms are pushed next to each other, the repulsion of their electrons keeps them apart, creating the physical rules that we see as solid matter.
Who told you that little kid? Anyway a long time ago scientists thought an atom was made of a positive charged nucleus and with some negative charged electrons flying around it like planets go around the sun. In this idea most of the space would be empty like our solar system. But I’ll not lie to you kiddo, that was so long ago and now scientists know this is not like that and to be honest I don’t understand it too.
If a group of monkeys with magical forcefield around each other are going wild and jumping, circling , bumping, interacting with each other forcefield everywhere in a huge room. The room is still count as 99.6 percent empty.
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.
I kind of think of an atom like our solar system. For simplicity say our solar system ends at Neptune. From the sun to Neptune is the “atom” but besides the planets and sun (and asteroids, etc..) the vast vast majority is basically an empty void. (Planets being electrons, sun being nucleus)
Think about a soccer stadium with a tiny pea in the center representing the nucleus. The electrons, like little ants, move around the stadium’s empty seats. Even though there’s a pea in the middle, most of the stadium is empty. That’s similar to an atom – it’s mostly empty space because the electrons are spread out far from the tiny nucleus. So, even though it looks solid, it’s mostly just empty space!
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