What does a uranium atom look like?

Answer 1

That depends on what you look with. Light particles are not small enough to get an image of an atom. That would be trying to find out what a wrench looks like by throwing tennis balls at it and looking at the pattern made by their bouncing off and passing by. but if you use BB's (4 mm steel balls) then you could get a better idea.
X-Rays give us some better definition but still quite a hazy picture of individual atoms.
If we look at a crystal (many identical atoms neatly arranged) then X-Ray crystallography gives a good definition on the spatial relationships between atoms.

Answer 2

At this point we have no clear "picture" of what an atom looks like. We can hypothesize what they look like through models. Hypothesize means to make a statement by using clues.

An atom has a nucleus. the nucleus is the center of the atom. An atom also has protons and neutrons at its center. Surrounding the protons and neutrons are electrons. Scientists at first thought electrons revolved around the nucleus. Now they say electrons are more like "clouds", because they stay in place. Like i said, they hypothesize.

Protons have a positive charge. Electrons have a negative charge. Since they are opposite charges they cancel each other out. Resulting in an electrical attraction bettween Protons and electrons. Like magnets. Neutrons are different. Neutrons are neither positive or negative. They have no charge: the word for it is neutral. Proton: + charge Electron: - charge Neutron: neutral (no charge)

Further Reading (advanced)

An atom always has the same number of electrons and protons. if it doesn't have the same number then it is an ion of that atom.

Anyway, an atom also has shells. Imagine 3 circles inside of each other, each circle around the center. these circles are shells. Inside the shells are electrons. The first shell can hold as many as 2 electrons, the second shell can hold as many as 8 electrons and the third can hold 16 electrons.When thinking of shells, think of the map. The map of the planets orbitting the sun. The orbits are represented in circles with planets. It's the same thing with atoms. The nucleus is at the center-like the sun. The shells are like the orbits. The planets are like the electrons.

Answer 3

Well first of you don't have just an gas atom. There are lots of different atoms that can exist in an gas state. These are gasses like H2, Argon, Krypton, Neon, Cl2.. these all exist in a gas state at room temperature. These atoms have different amounts of protons and electrons where the electrons are different in their orientation in space. This last fact causes the atom or molecule to have different chemical and physical properties. So when you are talking about purely the atomic level you have an distribution of an certain amount of electrons, an certain amount of protons and an certain amount of neutrons that makes up the atom. How this truly looks on the atomic scale cannot be know, this is an physical law. This is due quantum mechanical effects that I won't bother you with. How I described that an gas atom looked like also accounts for the solid and the liquid states of matter. They don't look different on the inside of an atom. Only the bonds "outside" of an molecule/atom differ for gasses and liquids and solids.. that is the what we call physics..

Answer 4

One can't actually 'see' them, too small you know. They look the same as other atoms, I'd suppose.

Answer 5

If you look at the sky a certain way, you can see little dots and it looks like they're moving around, and I think that they are atoms

Answer 6

http://www.strings.ph.qmul.ac.uk/~ramgosk/atom-with-electrons.gif

Answer 7

See the link below to see an image of the uranium atom.

Answer 8

It Is the Smallest paticles of matter

Answer 9

It looks like a giant ball