Quote:
Originally Posted by gumpzilla
Also - and I'm talking out my ass here a little bit - for the larger atoms where the weirdo orbitals start coming into play, I'd think the overall size and shape of the atom would be dominated by the lower filled n states. Once you fill all of the orbitals of a particular angular momentum I'm pretty sure you must recover spherical symmetry, and so if those are responsible for the bulk of the size, then whatever deviations from roundness you have from last orbital seems like they would probably be relatively minor.
Well, the "shape" of the overall atom would probably correspond to its largest (outermost) orbitals. And those would be for its
highest n state. So this reasoning is probably not correct.
The "weirdo" orbitals are of much higher energy, so the highest filled shell never contains them (only s and p orbitals). Palladium may be an exception. At any rate, the electron distribution doesn't always resemble a sphere.
Also, orbitals don't really represents a "shape." There are no "boundaries" to the orbitals, and the boundaries typically drawn are based on an arbitrary percentage (usually 90%) that an electron will be found within the region. Electrons can move outside of the region, sometimes so far outside of the region that they leave the atom and become part of a different atom ("tunneling"). I'm not sure how quantum weirdness factors in, but I'd bet atoms don't really have "shapes" per se, and that if they did they would represent fluctuating "blobs" more than spheres.