Question

How many electrons does silver have?

Answer 1

Hint: To calculate the number of electrons present in an atom, we have to know about the Atomic number (${\text{Z}}$) of that atom; because according to the relation between atomic number, protons & electrons Atomic number of the atom is always equal to the number of electrons or protons.

Complete answer:
Silver (${\text{Ag}}$) atom is situated at 4d series of the d – block in the periodic table and it is denoted as ${}_{{\text{47}}}^{{\text{108}}}{\text{Ag}}$.
-Upper quantity of ${}_{{\text{47}}}^{{\text{108}}}{\text{Ag}}$ denotes the Atomic mass (${\text{A}}$) of the silver atom and lower quantity denotes the Atomic number (${\text{Z}}$) of silver atom.
-As we know that, relation between the atomic number, number of electrons present in the orbital and number of protons present inside the nucleus of an atom is described as follow:
 Atomic Number (${\text{Z}}$) = No. of protons = No. of electrons
-From the above relation it is clear that in the silver atom (${\text{Ag}}$) $47$ electrons are present and its electronic configuration is written as $\left[ {{\text{Kr}}} \right]{\text{4}}{{\text{d}}^{{\text{10}}}}{\text{5}}{{\text{s}}^{\text{1}}}$.
Hence silver atoms have $47$ electrons.

Note:
Here some of you may think that when silver atom is present in ionic form then in this condition also number of electrons are equal to the atomic number of silver but that concept is not right, because by the removal of electrons from the atom or by the acceptance of electrons to the atom an ion will form.