Roughly speaking, we'd expect a neighboring pair of hydrogen atoms, A and B, to exert no force on each other at all, attractive or repulsive: there are two repulsive interactions (proton A with proton...Roughly speaking, we'd expect a neighboring pair of hydrogen atoms, A and B, to exert no force on each other at all, attractive or repulsive: there are two repulsive interactions (proton A with proton B and electron A with electron B) and two attractive interactions (proton A with electron B and electron A with proton B). The repulsion between the electrons would not be as strong, because each electron ranges over a large area, and is not likely to be found right on top of the other electron.
