Can the radius of an atom be measured directly?

Answer 1

Hi. The radius measured would be of the outer electron shell. Is this what you mean? If so then a device has been developed which can sense this directly, so yes. Search on "scanning tunneling microscope" .

Answer 2

Im pretty sure it can, you can find the average radius for a given temperature since as one of the answers has already said - the radius isnt fixed. I think the measurement can be done using X-ray crystallography as long as the element can be formed in to a well ordered solid (crystal!)

have a look on wikipedia about XRC, might have some info on this

hope this helps

Answer 3

The radius of an atom, i.e., the distance from its nucleus to the most probable position of its outermost electron, can be measured indirectly from the lengths of the bonds it forms with other atoms. The bond length, in turn, can be measured by X-ray diffraction, electron diffraction or spectroscopic techniques.

a) If an element M forms covalent bonds with itself, like M--M, the atomic radius (r) is just half the bond length.
b) If not, r can be estimated from the bond lengths for X--X bonds and M--X bonds, where X is another element which forms covalent bonds with itself and also combines with M.

Examples :
a) C--C covalent bond in ethane
b) Na--Cl ionic bond in sodium chloride and Cl--Cl bond in chlorine.

I'm not very sure, but direct measurement of atomic radii could be possible by using modern techniques of atom beam collisions and assessing the data of scattering.

Answer 4

No , the radius of an atom is not fixed

Answer 5

First, I don't understand the term 'directly' . What i know is we can measured it by microscopic calculation or weighting it.

Answer 6

No. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle makes the diameter calculation impossible. And that's a LAW, not a theory.

Answer 7

no, it currently can't be measured directly, but it can be measured indirectly

Answer 8

yes and why what grade are you in im iin 6 and i know that