What does the atomic number represent?
February 20th, 2023
In ground state atoms, both the number of protons and electrons.
But since electrons tend to get transferred or shared when with other atoms, most will just answer that the pertains to number of protons only.
So in ground state atoms (meaning no charges):
number of protons = number of electrons
Atomic number = number of protons
= number of neutrons + number of protons