AHL Atomic
Structure: Modern Theory
Slide 12 of 26
Solution to the wave equation: Shape of Orbital within a
shell
So
far so good!
What should have been obvious is that you have a situation where, going
back to the analogy, a drawer can have more than one folder (all
shells except n=1 contain more than one subshell), and also that a
folder can contain different number of information
(subshells such as p, d and f can contain more
than one orbital).
In
other words, electrons in atoms are found in orbitals.
Three
questions arise then:
Firstly, how are the orbitals in subshells within the same shell (s, p and d in n=3
for example) distinguished from one another?
Secondly
how are orbitals within the same subshell (the three p orbitals in p
subshell in n=3) differentiated?
And
lastly, how are orbitals in different shells (for instance the s
orbitals in n=1 and n=2) are different from one another?