I have gone deep into a rabbit hole and I’m now forgetting everything there is to know. Atoms are a unit of matter with a proton, neutron, and electron. First off, are protons and electrons physical objects, or are they just representing a positive and negative charge? Secondly, when atoms interact with each other via intermolecular forces to form molecules, what is physically interacting with each other?
In: Chemistry
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Yes, protons, neutrons, and electrons are all real things, although they aren’t really “objects” in the ordinary sense of the word. It’s difficult to eli5 but they’re not little balls flying around. Bonding between atoms and molecules is all about the electrons. Atoms have “zones” around the nucleus where they like to certain numbers of electrons. Depending on how many electrons are already in the outermost “zone”, the atom will want to take some electrons from its neighbor atoms, give some of its electrons away, or share them.
The more complicated answer is protons and neutrons are actual particles. They’re the bits in the center of the atom. Electrons are more difficult to comprehend. The model of the atom that you’ve seen your whole life is not very accurate. The sizes of the particles relative to each other and the distances between them are pretty large compared to size. My favorite visualization is to think of a decent sized football stadium. If you put a single pea on the 50 yard line then the electron cloud would roughly be a sphere about as far as the outer walls of the stadium. The electron cloud is where we start getting into the world of the quantum. There might be as many as 8 electrons in this shell (larger atoms have more shells). But it’s impossible to say where in that sphere any of those electrons really are. It’s more like each one is everywhere all at once. When 2 or more atoms join what is happening is the electron valences are combining. This is due to atoms really wanting to fill those valences, and that takes 8 electrons. They share electrons with other atoms to make this happen.
That is about as simple as I can explain it. I’m sure I got some things wrong, or at least not quite right. And I never said whether or not electrons are actually particles or just tiny electric charges. I believe that electrons are particles, but have very little “weight”. The whole story about how atoms work and their nature is so much more detailed. There are people that have spent entire careers working on trying to figure them out.
> First off, are protons and electrons physical objects, or are they just representing a positive and negative charge?
They’re a real thing that’s really there, but they’re, um, not exactly “physical objects”. They’re “standing waves” in a handful of quantum fields, which gets very convoluted to explain very quickly.
The not-exactly-true-but-true-*enough* way to put it is that you shouldn’t think of them as charged little balls, but more like charged regions of 3D space. For the very lowest-energy electrons this region is spherical (look up “electron cloud”) but at higher energies they form much weirder shapes. This region in space that the electron occupies is called the “electron orbital”.
> Secondly, when atoms interact with each other via intermolecular forces to form molecules, what is physically interacting with each other?
First, atoms do not interact via “intermolecular forces” – intermolecular forces by definition act *between* (*inter-*) two different molecules, not within (*intra-*) the same molecule.
Second, atoms link together to form a bond when their valence (=outermost) electrons’ orbitals overlap*. That is, when an Atom 1’s electron occupies some region of space, and Atom 2’s electron occupies *the same* region of space, they smoosh together into one big region of space that holds both electrons simultaneously and now you’ve got a *molecular orbital* (MO). Both atoms’ nuclei are trying to hold onto that MO at the same time via the electrostatic force (the “opposite charges attract” force), so you basically get this sort of tug-of-war between the two nuclei using the MO as the rope, and that’s what we call a “bond”.
(* and in-phase, yes I know what an anti-bonding MO is)
Protons, neutrons, and electrons are distinct things. You can take a proton on its own and move it around. The same is true for neutrons and electrons.
Now, they aren’t solid balls of matter. When you picture them as a sphere that isn’t quire right. It’s easier to envision them that way though.
When atoms interact via IMF’s it is usually electrostatics and degeneracy. Electrostatics, the interaction between charges, has a complicated behavior with all of those electrons and protons moving around. Degeneracy is the fact that two electrons cannot exist in the same “spot”.
IMF’s, especially van der waals forces, are fairly complicated in their details.
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