Neon molecule?

Question

I've got to construct a model of a molecule of neon for my science class, but, and please forgive my ignorance, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I know there are 10 electrons on the two energy shells, but I don't know what to put inside the nucleus. I was thinking 10 protons and 10 neutrons, but I'm not sure at all. Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

Sure, that's how you get balanced charges.
Molecular weight of 20.

Answer 2

Look at a periodic table. =D The number of protons is also known as the atomic number. Since Ne's atomic number is 10, it has 10 protons in the nucleus. The number of neutrons is the atomic mass - atomic number, which means you've got your 10 neutrons in the neucleus. So that's your center. Other than that, the atom (I'm hoping you mean atom and not molecule because neon doesn't usually make molecules) is mostly empty space. You can assume that Ne isn't ionized because the problem would have said and because it's a noble gas, and noble gasses aren't ionized. That means that it has to have 10 electrons. By the way, http://www.pen.k12.va.us/VDOE/Assessment/Manipulatives/PTE.pdf is a really helpful periodic table because it's got the electron configs. Anyway. Neon has two shells. In the first shell, it has one subshell (s) and one orbital. Each orbital has two electrons. So you put two electrons in the first orbital, and that into the first subshell and then the shell. The next shell has two subshells, s and p. The s subshell (again) has one orbital, so you put two electrons in that. The p subshell has 3 orbitals, so you put two electrons into each orbital, which takes care of the rest of the ten electrons. If you really care about the subshell shapes, you can look at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCEDLib/WebWare/collection/open/JCEWWOR009/orbitalshapes.html

Yeah. I'm sorry if I didn't really say what you needed, but I didn't know really what sort of info you wanted...

Answer 3

What you are proposing to model is a neon atom -- neon does not form molecules. The nucleus contains 10 protons, and 10, 11, or 12 neutrons (for stable isotopes) It is essentially impossible to make a realistic model of neon, or any other atom: the electron shells are basically fog, of varying density, and the nucleus (in anything less than a room-size model) is too small to see. But with these caveats, you can come up with something. I wish science teachers would not ask kids to do this -- the models are too unrealistic to be of much educational value.

Answer 4

You are right to put 10 protons & 10 neutrons inside the nucleus.Because the mass no. of Neon is 20 which is the sum of no. of protons & neutrons.