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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.
Similar to a core electron, a valence electron has the ability to absorb or release energy in the form of a photon. An energy gain can trigger the electron to move (jump) to an outer shell; this is known as atomic excitation. Or the electron can even break free from its associated atom's shell; this is ionization to form a positive ion. When an ...
The first electron shell, n = 1, consists of only one orbital, and the maximum number of valence electrons that a period 1 element can accommodate is two, both in the 1s orbital. The valence shell lacks "p" or any other kind of orbitals due to the general l < n constraint on the quantum numbers. Therefore, period 1 has exactly two elements.
The value of n ranges from 1 to the shell containing the outermost electron of that atom, that is [12] =,, … For example, in caesium (Cs), the outermost valence electron is in the shell with energy level 6, so an electron in caesium can have an n value from 1 to 6.
This page shows the electron configurations of the neutral gaseous atoms in their ground states. For each atom the subshells are given first in concise form, then with all subshells written out, followed by the number of electrons per shell. For phosphorus (element 15) as an example, the concise form is [Ne] 3s 2 3p 3.
Fundamentally, an atomic orbital is a one-electron wave function, even though many electrons are not in one-electron atoms, and so the one-electron view is an approximation. When thinking about orbitals, we are often given an orbital visualization heavily influenced by the Hartree–Fock approximation, which is one way to reduce the ...
For example, hydrogen has one electron in the s-orbital of the first shell, so its configuration is written 1s 1. Lithium has two electrons in the 1s-subshell and one in the (higher-energy) 2s-subshell, so its configuration is written 1s 2 2s 1 (pronounced "one-s-two, two-s-one").
The number of electron pairs in the valence shell of a central atom is determined after drawing the Lewis structure of the molecule, and expanding it to show all bonding groups and lone pairs of electrons. [1]: 410–417 In VSEPR theory, a double bond or triple bond is treated as a single bonding group. [1]