# What actually is the empty space in an atom? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 5, 2014, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actually-is-the-empty-space-in-an-atom/706415 "2014-12-05T15:53:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actually-is-the-empty-space-in-an-atom/706415/1 "2014-12-05T15:53:24Z")
What actually is the space between the nucleus and an electron in an atom? ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actually-is-the-empty-space-in-an-atom/706415/2 "2014-12-05T15:59:49Z")
> [@NineToTheSky](#): > > What actually is the space between the nucleus and an electron in an atom? Complicated. The problem is that the nucleus and (especially) the electron don’t act like teeny tiny billiard balls, but like a combination of particle and wave properties that can be described mathematically but not really understood intuitively. The simplest description is that the space is (mostly) not really empty but filled with some greater or lesser degree of “electron wave”. ---
**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actually-is-the-empty-space-in-an-atom/706415/3 "2014-12-05T16:04:51Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actually-is-the-empty-space-in-an-atom/706415/4 "2014-12-05T16:27:16Z")
As I understand it, the empty space is where an electron is least likely to be at any given time. ---
**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actually-is-the-empty-space-in-an-atom/706415/5 "2014-12-05T16:35:40Z")
Ah, but what is the empty space? If the electron isn’t at that point, is there still an electron wave? ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actually-is-the-empty-space-in-an-atom/706415/6 "2014-12-05T17:04:10Z")
> [@NineToTheSky](#): > > Ah, but what is the empty space? If the electron isn’t at that point, is there still an electron wave? You can’t say that the electron isn’t there until you’ve collapsed its waveform. I’m not sure if you could collapse all the waves in the vicinity of a hydrogen nucleus. There would be photon waves and gravity waves all the time, right? ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actually-is-the-empty-space-in-an-atom/706415/7 "2014-12-05T17:07:13Z")
Fields. The whole universe is packed to the rafters with fields. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actually-is-the-empty-space-in-an-atom/706415/8 "2014-12-05T17:34:07Z")
> [@NineToTheSky](#): > > What actually is the space between the nucleus and an electron in an atom? The only good answer is “probably the electron” Atoms don’t really look like miniature solar systems. There is, for the lowest state, a spherically symmetric probability density “cloud” that describes the likelihood of finding the electron there. The atoms looks like this: > **[Atom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom#mediaviewer/File:Helium_atom_QM.svg)** > > Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of protons that are in their atoms. For example, any atom that contains 11 protons is sodium, and any atom that contains 29 protons is copper. Atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons are called isotopes of the ... Not like this: > **[Atom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom#mediaviewer/File:Bohr_atom_animation_2.gif)** > > Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of protons that are in their atoms. For example, any atom that contains 11 protons is sodium, and any atom that contains 29 protons is copper. Atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons are called isotopes of the ... So the atom isn’t “mostly empty space”. It’s mostly the chance of finding an electron there. States above the ground state have different probability distributions, which REALLY challenge your intuition of the Ways Things Ought To Behave. > **[Atomic orbital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_orbital)** > > In quantum mechanics, an atomic orbital (/ˈɔːrbɪtəl/) is a function describing the location and wave-like behavior of an electron in an atom. This function describes an electron's charge distribution around the atom's nucleus, and can be used to calculate the probability of finding an electron in a specific region around the nucleus. > Each orbital in an atom is characterized by a set of values of three quantum numbers n, ℓ, and mℓ, which respectively correspond to electron's energy, its orbit...