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Actually, as I look at carbon more closely, that's exactly what they're drawing. The inner circle (s orbital) has two yellow dots (electrons) on it, and the outer circle (p orbital) has 4 yellow dots. It does look like they totally ripped off this lady's drawing though: http://www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk/nf/ClipArt/Image/0,,_1...

Clearly they aren't drawing the orbitals for water, which I already stated.

But you're right, carbon is probably too big. Wolfram alpha says the diameter of carbon is 134pm, and we all know WA is right about everything.



So, I actually submitted feedback about this on the site. Their response:

"Thanks for your response to our website.

Depicting the size of atoms definitely has its challenges. We've been getting a lot of comments and feedback about this.

The radius of a carbon atom is not a measure of the size of its electron cloud, but rather the distance between the nuclei of two adjacent atoms. See http://www.chemguide.co.uk/atoms/properties/atradius.html The size of the carbon atom in our activity is based on its van der Waals radius (170 pm), not the covalent or ionic radius (around 77 pm). See http://www.webelements.com/carbon/atom_sizes.html

The sizes of the atoms in the water molecule have been adjusted to make them consistent with other atoms depicted in the activity, although the overall diameter of the molecule is the same.

Sincerely,

Sheila Avery Genetic Science Learning Center"




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