[cripplecreek]

What I take away from the video is that they don’t make actual contact. He’s defining a contact point as the point where they get close enough to repel each other.

It might be different if an atom were a simple solid piece of matter but it isn’t. If a hydrogen atom had a nucleus the size of a basketball, it would have an electron orbiting nearly a half mile away. If you have a neighboring atom, it doesn’t seem possible that their electron orbits can cross or there would be chaos and the atoms would destroy each other. (Electrons smashing into each other or into the nuclei of the neighboring atom)

[Boogieman]

“It might be different if an atom were a simple solid piece of matter but it isn’t.”

We have known the Rutherford model of the atom is not accurate for some time, so why bother talking about atoms as if it were? It seems more accurate to say that “solid matter” is an effect produced by atoms, like an emergent phenomenon, and not an attribute of the atoms themselves.

[expat2]

The H atom is both the nucleus and the electron, not just the nucleus. When two H atoms approach each other the electrons do 'cross' each other. In fact, the two electrons both go around each of the nuclei (exchange) and produce a molecule consisting of two nuclei with 2 electrons 'buzzing around' them both. This forms the H2 molecular bond.

So, do the atoms touch? They not only touch but they merge. Do the nuclei touch? No, except under very unusual circumstances, but that is a very different quetion.

[loungitude]

I think it’s the way you describe in metals. A mess of electrons swinning around everywhere.