What does a neutral atom shape look like?

Answer 1

Chemistry textbooks typically include illustrations of atoms, but with caveats. The drawings depict atomic nuclei surrounded by electron orbitals-fuzzy spheres, barbells, tripods, and so on-but those figures represent the probability of finding an electron at a certain place around the nucleus rather than an actual "shape." Researchers have now managed to image the electron orbitals and show for the first time that, in a sense, atoms really look like those textbook images.