What does a bowl of gold atoms look like, and why haven't I ever seen one?

Question

I'm talking about say a bowl filled with particles of gold, or say nickel or chrome or iron, whatever, each grain being only one or 2 atoms large. I'm imagining it would look like liquid, and almost feel like it as well, yet still hold some shape like sand. But why have I never seen this? Why do we end up with clumbs no smaller than billions to trillions of atoms in size, even when we precipitate a metal out of solution? Has anyone ever seen a bowl of gold atoms?

Update:

I did find an entry in Wikipedia, "Nanoparticles". It's mentioned in there that nanometer-scale particles of gold in a solution appear dark red to black....

Update 2:

No, I don't mean one or 2 atoms, I mean quadrillions of them in a bowl.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

If they were only 1 or 2 atoms large, then you would never see it.

Anonymous · Answer

If there was two atoms of gold chilling on your hand right now, you wouldn't notice. So an unlucky scientist would have to look on every sufrace with an electron microscope hoping to look for a rare bond of 2 gold atoms. Since you can't see very little amounts of atoms, he wouldn't know where to start looking for this.

Anonymous · Answer

My semen looks like that

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What does a bowl of gold atoms look like, and why haven't I ever seen one?

3 Answers