• Question: What is the highest amount of electrons found in an atom

    Asked by anon-200670 to Oliver on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Oliver Gordon

      Oliver Gordon answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      From what I understand, there is no “maximum” size to an atom. You can put in more and more and more electrons – the only problem is that they instantly break apart.

      So “stable” atoms would be the largest stuff on the periodic table.

      Unstable? Because you have “n” shells of electrons, quantum mechanics predicts that you can have 2n^2 electrons in an atom.

      I’ll be honest – I haven’t thought about this a huge amount! I guess the reason we haven’t really though about it is that there’s limited uses for super big atoms. What special properties could they have beyond the periodic table? And when we can still find stuff out with what’s in the periodic table… why find out yet?

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