Does most of an atom really consist of empty spaces?

When you think of the structure of an atom, you probably imagine something like the image below, that is, a lot of compressed particles forming the nucleus with a bunch of little balls buzzing around it. Look:

This representation is inspired by the Rutherford model - where the nucleus is made up of protons and neutrons, and the orbiting balls are the electrons. And if we rely on this image, the impression we get is that most of an atom is made up of empty spaces. Is it really that?

Waves

According to the “physicist” of Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist portal - a site dedicated to answering interesting questions about physics and mathematics - although electrons are subatomic particles and are often represented in the form of balls, they must be understood. Like waves.

Therefore, being waves, it is impossible to specify their size, so we cannot determine exactly how much space they occupy around an atom, nor what their precise position is at any given time.

Think about what happens when we ring a bell, for example. Although we know that it is vibrating, we cannot determine where exactly this vibration is located. This is because it is a wave that spreads across the bell's surface - and some parts of it will vibrate more than others.

Space Filled

According to the folks at Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist, the electrons behave in a bell-like manner, that is, vibrating like a wave instead of orbiting around the nucleus of the atom in the form of a particle. Thus, contrary to what it seems, atoms are not mainly composed of empty spaces.

Remember the old explanation we heard in chemistry - that 99.9% of an atom's mass is concentrated in its nucleus? For the area in which the nucleus lies is small compared to the region occupied by the electrons. Incidentally, the protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus, although they are also subatomic particles, should not be imagined in the form of balls, but in the same way as electrons, that is, as waves.

So just as it is impossible to determine the exact position of the electrons that exist around the nucleus of an atom, it is equally impossible to pinpoint where exactly the protons and neutrons are located.

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Remember that, according to quantum physics, more precisely Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, subatomic particles behave like wave and particle at the same time, but it is impossible to determine simultaneously their velocity (or energy) and position. - and when we try to measure it, the wave function collapses. Thus, depending on the experiment performed, the particle will behave as a wave or particle.