Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas (hydrogen atoms are not colored). We ionize it (become negatively charged) when it is in its lowest energy state, the ground state. The amount of energy required to ionize a hydrogen atom is approximately -36.91829542539063599e-27.
The energy required to ionize a hydrogen atom is one-sixth of the energy required to break up one electron into a positive and negative particle. So we can see that the energy required to ionize a hydrogen atom is more than just about sufficient to turn a water molecule into a salt. It would require an amount of energy equal to the square of the mass of water.
We can get more information about energy and mass by going to www.chemistry.about.com or www.jstor.org. These sites will give you an idea of the energy required to ionize a hydrogen atom.
The mass of the atom is basically the same except for the fact that the electron is pulled into the center of the nucleus and the mass of the atom is determined by the area occupied by the electron and the radius of the atom. So we can see that the energy needed to ionize a hydrogen atom is almost equal to the mass of the atom.
We know that the mass of a hydrogen atom is about 3.03 x 10-16 grams. The energy required to ionize a hydrogen atom is about 9.6 x 10-19 Joules. For comparison, energy is the same in the atmosphere as it is in a microwave oven.
You can also see that the mass is proportional to the radius of the atom. So if you take a hydrogen atom and increase its radius by one — say by one half — the mass of the atom will increase by a factor of 4, which is not that large of a change. For comparison, the mass of an atom of lithium is about 6.9 x 10-15 grams.
As it turns out, the atom of lithium is a very small one. In the same way the hydrogen atom is a very small one, the lithium atom is a very small one. This means the lithium atom’s radius is only about 0.4 times that of a hydrogen atom. So it has the same mass as a hydrogen atom and therefore the same energy, but about 3.4 times as heavy.
So if you wanted to ionize a hydrogen atom, you would need a lot of energy. It is not that large a change. The mass of an atom of lithium is about 4.5 x 10-24 grams, so you would need a lot of energy to ionize it. But how much energy do you need? Well, the energy required to ionize a hydrogen atom to create a lithium atom is 0.00000138 MegaJoules.
While the energy required to ionize a hydrogen atom is not that large a change, the energy required to create a lithium atom is big enough to make it a pretty huge change. Lithium atoms have about 1/5 that mass of hydrogen atoms and about 2/3 that energy to create a lithium atom. So it is about 1/10 that much energy to create a lithium atom. So if you wanted to create a lithium atom, you would need a lot of energy.
You would get away with that if you were storing the lithium atom in a container of water. The energy required to ionize hydrogen atoms is about 10 times less than that needed to ionize lithium atoms. So, while it is possible to create lithium atoms, it is not possible to ionize them. Lithium atoms are, however, stable and if you have enough energy to create them, they could be created in a matter of minutes.
