How do you create an image of an atom?

Answer 1

You cannot create an image of an atom without altering the atom because the act of inspecting it will influence and disturb it. Even if you could bounce light beams off of it, which you cannot, the size of the photon field of influence is too large to make a fine enough image of the atom. Even if you could, somehow, solve that problem, you still cannot make an image because both the electron cloud and the nucleus are quantum state entities that would appear to "exist" in multiple states at each instant of time, time, by the way, being a very strange concept when you get down into the relativistic world of the atom. I did say, at the beginning that you cannot do this, didn't I - let's just leave it at that - shall we. :-)>