Chemistry: Atoms First (2nd Edition)

Published by Cengage Learning
ISBN 10: 1305079248
ISBN 13: 978-1-30507-924-3

Chapter 1 - Challenge Problems - Page 51f: 68

Answer

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Work Step by Step

This claim is not reasonably accurate. The size of a nucleus is on the order of 10^-15 meters, while the average distance of an electron from the nucleus is on the order of 10^-10 meters. To provide mathematical support: The size of a grape is about 2.0 cm or 0.02 m. The electron distance is $0.02\times 10^5=2,000$m$\approx 1.243$ miles. This means that, quantitatively, the claim is reasonably accurate: scaling a fm-scale nucleus to a grape (centimeter scale) puts the electron cloud on the order of about 1 mile is a perfectly acceptable, memorable approximation.
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