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Chemistry Forums for Students => Undergraduate General Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: Winga on January 06, 2006, 01:34:40 PM

Title: About Atomic Radius: empircal vs. calculated
Post by: Winga on January 06, 2006, 01:34:40 PM

I wonder which atomic radius data is more precise to the real cases, the empircal one or calculated one?

Title: Re:About Atomic Radius
Post by: Mitch on January 06, 2006, 01:48:16 PM

Depends who you ask. A theorist would say the calculated one and the experimentalist would say the empirical one.

Title: Re:About Atomic Radius: empircal vs. calculated
Post by: Donaldson Tan on January 09, 2006, 06:51:40 AM

Empirical means "verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment".

I will side with the experimentalist.  :1eye:

Title: Re:About Atomic Radius: empircal vs. calculated
Post by: Winga on January 09, 2006, 10:39:15 AM

Quote from: geodome on January 09, 2006, 06:51:40 AM

Empirical means "verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment".

I will side with the experimentalist.  :1eye:

So, what experiments did the scientists do?

Title: Re:About Atomic Radius: empircal vs. calculated
Post by: alkemist on January 10, 2006, 07:55:06 PM

Empirical ones.  Experimental data basically means that you measured it.  Theoretical predictions are useful when there are no ways of measuring radii experiementally, or if you want to predict the radius of an element that hasn't been discovered yet, or it has too short of a half-life.