Given sodium's atomic number of 11 and its atomic weight of 22.898, how many electrons occur in a sodium atom?

1 Answer
Jul 28, 2016

If #Z=11#, the number of electrons in the neutral element is ALSO #11#.

Explanation:

Matter is (on the whole) NEUTRAL. If there are 10 nuclear protons, 10 fundamental positively charged particles, there are necessarily 10 electrons, 10 fundamental negatively charged particles associated with the natrium nucleus. We don't have to know much about atomic structure about this point.