What is the diameter of a cadmium atom in Angstroms?

Answer 1

Let me start with the following definitions:
The atomic radius is the distance from the atomic nucleus to the
outmost stable electron orbital in an atom that is at equilibrium and
it is measured in picometers or angstroms.

The van der Waals radius of an atom is the radius of an imaginary hard
sphere which can be used to model the atom.


For the Cadmium the above values are (in picometres -pm):
Atomic radius (empirical) ---> 155 pm
Atomic radius (calculated) --> 161 pm
Van der Waals radius --------> 158 pm


For practical purposes you can consider the Cadmium atom diameter as twice the
Van der Waals radius, that is:
Cadmium atom diameter ------> 2*158 pm = 316 pm

Since each Angstrom is equivalent to 100 pm we have that:
Cadmium atom diameter ------> 316 pm = 3.16 A aprox.


For references see:
"Atomic radius - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_radius

Answer 2

Atomic radius = 155pm
Atomic diameter = 310pm = 0.310nm = 3.10 Angstroms

Answer 3

Atomic radius 1.55  A
Atomic radius (calc.) 1.61  A
Covalent radius 1.48  A
Van der Waals radius 1.58 A

Answer 4

Other units are too big, so they would give you a dimension with a large negative exponent.