Question

Mercury is a liquid metal at room temperature. It’s symbol is Hg. How many electron clouds does Mercury have? ________

Answer 1

I looked it up and here's what it said

To balance the charge of 80 protons this atom has a cloud of 80 electrons spinning around its nucleus.

Answer 2

Mercury have 40 electron clouds.

Explanation:

The electron clouds are the region where there is maximum probability of finding electrons.

As it is known that the actual position of electrons cannot be determined, so Schrodinger and Heisenberg developed the electron cloud model, where the electrons are stated to circulate the nucleus in a cloud form.

So as the atomic number of mercury is 80, that means the number of electrons will be 80.

As it is known from Pauli’s exclusion and Aufbau principle that two electrons can occupy a sub-shell or orbitals in opposite spin directions, so 80 electrons will be occupied in 40 shells (80/2 = 40).

Thus it can be confirmed that 40 electron clouds are present around the nucleus of mercury consisting of 80 electrons in 40 electron clouds.