Myth-busting about electron cloud
Inside an atom, you can hardly locate the position of an electron due to its quantum behavior. There is no circular path for it to rotate around the nucleus. You can’t mention the precise location of an electron at any given time. You had better say it may stay there. If we plot electrons probable position at the different time around the nucleus, we obtain a third-dimensional picture, like this -
The darker place indicates that at any instant there has more probability for an electron to stay there than the place where the graph is not so dark. We can also state it in a different tone “Most of the time, an electron stays at the darker place.”
In an atom, the electron is bounded by the potential well of the atom’s nucleus. The electron rotates around the nucleus of the atom due to the ‘Coulomb force’. From de Broglie’s equation, we know there is a matter-wave affiliated with an electron. You can find the wavelength from Broglie’s equation. This matter-wave has no physical meaning at all. But If we square it, we get the probability function. The electron cloud is the 3rd-dimensional dot plot representation of electrons probable position. But don’t think an electron spreads itself in the entire space of the cloud. This cloud is just the dot plot representation of the probability function.