Stern and Gerlach Experiment

[Sukanya Mohapatra 2G]

Why were silver atoms used in the experiment, as opposed to other atoms?

[Sarah Zhari 1D]

Silver atoms were chosen because they have one unpaired electron. Therefore, the atom acts as a single unpaired electron. As a stream of silver atoms are passed through a magnetic field, they split into two streams, one where the unpaired electron is spin-up, and the other where the electron is spin-down.

[DLee_1L]

Just adding onto the previous explanation. Silver was used in the experiment because it had only one unpaired electron in the 5s orbital, which makes the silver atom's overall magnetic field easily influenced by it.