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An electron can be bound to the nucleus of an atom by the attractive Coulomb force. A system of one or more electrons bound to a nucleus is called an atom. If the number of electrons is different from the nucleus's electrical charge, such an atom is called an ion.
These values are also called "spin up" or "spin down" respectively. The Pauli exclusion principle states that no two electrons in an atom can have the same values of all four quantum numbers. If there are two electrons in an orbital with given values for three quantum numbers, (n, ℓ, m), these two electrons must differ in their spin ...
In chemistry and atomic physics, an electron shell may be thought of as an orbit that electrons follow around an atom's nucleus.The closest shell to the nucleus is called the "1 shell" (also called the "K shell"), followed by the "2 shell" (or "L shell"), then the "3 shell" (or "M shell"), and so on further and further from the nucleus.
Spin is an intrinsic form of angular momentum carried by elementary particles, and thus by composite particles such as hadrons, atomic nuclei, and atoms. [1] [2]: 183–184 Spin is quantized, and accurate models for the interaction with spin require relativistic quantum mechanics or quantum field theory.
Spin is measured in units of the reduced Planck constant (ħ), with electrons, protons and neutrons all having spin 1 ⁄ 2 ħ, or "spin-1 ⁄ 2". In an atom, electrons in motion around the nucleus possess orbital angular momentum in addition to their spin, while the nucleus itself possesses angular momentum due to its nuclear spin. [83]
A particle's spin is generally represented in terms of spin operators. It turns out for particles that make up ordinary matter (protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, etc.) particles are of spin 1/2. [4] Only two energy levels (eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian) exist for a spin 1/2 state: "up" spin, or +1/2, and "down" spin, or -1/2.
This was a significant step in the development of quantum mechanics. It also described the possibility of atomic energy levels being split by a magnetic field (called the Zeeman effect). Walther Kossel worked with Bohr and Sommerfeld on the Bohr–Sommerfeld model of the atom introducing two electrons in the first shell and eight in the second. [8]
For higher n the electron is farther from the nucleus, on average. For each value of n there are n accepted ℓ (azimuthal) values ranging from 0 to n − 1 inclusively, hence higher-n electron states are more numerous. [citation needed] Accounting for two states of spin, each n-shell can accommodate up to 2n 2 electrons.