[neilep (OP)]

Dear Atomology Experts,


As a sheepy I of course have everyone wanting to hug me wherever I go. I'm a very tactile sheepy.
Take a look at the true non doctored picture of real atoms.



True non- doctored -bona- fide -to -scale
picture of best friend atoms last Tuesday.




awwwwwwwwww..look at them, they are best friends. 


Can they actually hold hands though ? Can Atoms Touch Each Other ? what happens if they do ?

whajafink ?


neil

Oh chummy atoms ewe may be acquainted
But holding hands may in fact be quite tainted
I've asked the kweschun on your friendship behalf
If the answer is 'no' you'll have to both use a staff.

[chiralSPO]

well... atoms don't have hands, but there are several reasonable definitions of touch that would include two atoms "touching."

There are also some definitions that would have requirements that one (or two) atoms couldn't possibly satisfy.

[Bill S]

https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/04/16/do-atoms-ever-actually-touch-each-other/

Note that the everday concept of touch (i.e the hard boundaries of two objects exist at the same location) makes no sense at the atomic level because atoms don't have hard boundaries. Atoms are not really solid spheres. They are fuzzy quantum probability clouds filled with electrons spread out into waving cloud-like shapes called "orbitals".

So, they’re really quite “sheepy” at heart.

[Halc]

Atoms (in molecules say) keep each other at a distance to the the repulsion of their electron clouds.
For electrons to literally 'touch', they'd have to be at the same location, and the EM repulsion force (not to mention the even stronger nuclear forces) would repel at pretty much infinite force. Things can get arbitrarily close, but to touch they'd have to be at the same location, which the forces don't allow.

Hence the definition of 'touch' typically being more reasonable than that, as chiralSPO points out.  Atoms are considered to be touching if their repulsion due to their electrons makes a significant contribution to the distance between the atoms.

[Bored chemist]

Never mind "touch" all atoms in the universe overlap.
They don't have "edges".

[neilep (OP)]

https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/04/16/do-atoms-ever-actually-touch-each-other/

Note that the everday concept of touch (i.e the hard boundaries of two objects exist at the same location) makes no sense at the atomic level because atoms don't have hard boundaries. Atoms are not really solid spheres. They are fuzzy quantum probability clouds filled with electrons spread out into waving cloud-like shapes called "orbitals".

So, they’re really quite “sheepy” at heart.

Thank ewe  Bill S  for the link.

[neilep (OP)]

well... atoms don't have hands, but there are several reasonable definitions of touch that would include two atoms "touching."

There are also some definitions that would have requirements that one (or two) atoms couldn't possibly satisfy.

Thanks very much chiralSPO.  Appreciated.

[neilep (OP)]

Atoms (in molecules say) keep each other at a distance to the the repulsion of their electron clouds.
For electrons to literally 'touch', they'd have to be at the same location, and the EM repulsion force (not to mention the even stronger nuclear forces) would repel at pretty much infinite force. Things can get arbitrarily close, but to touch they'd have to be at the same location, which the forces don't allow.

Hence the definition of 'touch' typically being more reasonable than that, as chiralSPO points out.  Atoms are considered to be touching if their repulsion due to their electrons makes a significant contribution to the distance between the atoms.

Very interesting "infinite" force ?

[Halc]

Very interesting "infinite" force ?

Coulomb's law"  F=kq₁q₂/r˛
If say two electrons 'touch', that reduces r to zero and F (force) becomes infinite.
Of course it isn't really meaningful to speak of an electron's exact location, but that still doesn't dissuade the LHC guys from trying to get a pair of particles ever closer to each other. Don't think anybody does it with electrons. Any non-fundamental thing (like a proton) will break into its component parts by this abuse.

[evan_au]

Can atoms actually hold hands though ?

One of the atomic models I learned at university represented electrons as dots.
- These electrons like to hang around in pairs, where one is "spin up", and the other is "spin down".
- The opposing spins counteract the coulomb force, making the pairing energetically favorable

Some atoms have an unpaired electron in the outer shell, and, given half a chance, these atoms will pair up with another atom, so their unpaired electrons are in a spin up/spin down combination.

Hydrogen gas is a perfect example - two hydrogen atoms holding electron "hands".
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_structure

[Bill S]

Oh chummy atoms ewe may be acquainted
But holding hands may in fact be quite tainted
I've asked the kweschun on your friendship behalf
If the answer is 'no' you'll have to both use a staff.

But if the answer should be yes,
Our physics would be quite a mess.
We would revise the world we see,
Except, perhaps, we would not be!

[Petrochemicals]

I would have thought nuclear fusion was touching.