Gold leaf is a very thin sheet of gold used to decorate cakes.
A sheet of gold leaf is 1.0 × 10-7 m thick.
A gold atom has a diameter of 2.9 × 10-10 m.
Calculate how many gold atoms thick the sheet of gold leaf is.
Give your answer to 2 significant figures.
The nucleus of a gold atom has a diameter of 1.4 × 10-14 m.
Calculate how many times larger the diameter of a gold atom is than the diameter of its nucleus.
Give your answer to 2 significant figures.
A teacher says:
"If the nucleus of a gold atom was the size of a pea 1 cm across, the whole atom would be about as wide as a football stadium (about 200 m)."
Use your answer to (b) to evaluate the teacher's statement.
Most of the volume of an atom is empty space, but most of the mass of an atom is in the nucleus.
Explain why most of the mass is in the nucleus. Use ideas about the particles in an atom.
51 exam-style questions on OCR GCSE Chemistry 1.2 Atomic structure, covering 1.2.1 Development of the atomic model, 1.2.2 The nuclear model and the size of atoms, and 1.2.3 Subatomic particles in atoms and ions. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.