Electronic Structure of Atoms

Light can be described as an electromagnetic wave, and its behavior helps explain many patterns seen in science. For centuries, scientists have tried to understand light. Newton used lenses and prisms to show that white light is made of the colors of the rainbow mixed together. He explained light as tiny particles moving at high speed.

Other scientists, including Christiaan Huygens, showed that reflection and refraction could also be explained by treating light as a wave. At the time, people...

The electromagnetic spectrum includes all electromagnetic radiation arranged by frequency and wavelength. Visible light is only a small part of it, and each color of visible light has its own frequency and wavelength. Different parts of the spectrum also use different units. Radio waves are usually measured in MHz, while the visible range is often measured in nm or angstroms.

The spectrum is organized from radio waves to gamma rays as frequency increases and wavelength decreases. Radio waves...

Light can form wave patterns through interference and diffraction. When two electromagnetic waves meet with their peaks and troughs lined up, they combine into a larger wave. This is constructive interference, and the waves are in phase. When a peak of one wave meets a trough of the other, the waves reduce each other. This is destructive interference, and the result has a much lower amplitude.

Diffraction is another wave behavior. When light passes through a slit that is about the same size as...

Light can eject electrons from a metal surface when it has the right frequency. This process is called the photoelectric effect. Each metal has its own threshold frequency, which is the minimum light frequency needed to free electrons.

Light below the threshold frequency cannot cause emission, even if it is very bright. When the light frequency is above the threshold, electrons are ejected. In that case, the number of electrons released is directly proportional to the intensity, or brightness,...

Bohr’s quantized atomic orbits explain why hydrogen atoms can stay stable. Early in the twentieth century, Ernest Rutherford and his colleagues described atoms as tiny dense nuclei with lighter electrons moving around them. This picture was called the planetary model because it compared the atom to a miniature solar system, with electrons orbiting the nucleus like planets around the sun.

The simplest atom is hydrogen. It has one proton in the nucleus and one electron moving around it. In the...

Line spectra are produced when heated gases give off light at specific wavelengths. In contrast, hot solids, liquids, or condensed gases radiate excess energy as a continuous spectrum. That spectrum contains an unbroken range of wavelengths.

A gas at low partial pressure can produce a line spectrum when it is excited by an electric current or heated. Fluorescent light bulbs and neon signs work in this way. Each element has its own characteristic set of lines, and molecules can also produce...

Electron waves and standing orbits explain how tiny particles can behave like waves. Large objects in the macroscopic world, like a billiard ball on a table, follow classical physics. A ball keeps moving in a straight line unless it hits another ball or a force such as friction acts on it. It also has a well-defined position, velocity, and momentum, where momentum is mass times velocity.

Waves behave differently from macroscopic particles. When waves interact, they can form interference...

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle sets a limit on how precisely we can know an electron’s position and momentum at the same time. Momentum is the motion of a particle, and the two measurements affect each other. If the momentum is known more accurately, the position becomes less certain, and the reverse is also true.

Heisenberg described this limit with an equation that uses Planck’s constant. The equation shows the smallest possible uncertainty for position and momentum together. It explains...

Quantum mechanics explains how electrons behave in atoms using waves and probability. Erwin Schrödinger built on de Broglie’s idea that an electron in hydrogen could act like a circular standing wave instead of moving in fixed circular paths. He then derived the Schrödinger equation, which became a major step in modern atomic theory.

When Schrödinger applied his equation to hydrogen-like atoms, it matched Bohr’s energy expression and the Rydberg formula for hydrogen spectra. He described...

Electron orbitals are described by quantum numbers that show where an electron is most likely to be found around the nucleus. These numbers come from the quantum mechanical model, which is based on solutions of the Schrödinger equation. They also help explain why electron energy comes in set values instead of changing smoothly.

The principal quantum number, n, labels the energy level. It can be 1, 2, 3, and so on, and higher n values usually mean higher electron energy. This number also tells...

Electron regions in atomic orbitals show where an electron is most likely to be found in an atom. These three-dimensional regions are often drawn as boundary surfaces around the densest part of the cloud.

The shape of an orbital depends on the angular momentum quantum number, l. This value can range from 0 to n - 1, where n is the principal quantum number. For n = 1, only l = 0 is allowed. For n = 2, both l = 0 and l = 1 are allowed.

Orbitals with the same value of l form a subshell. The l =...

Electron spin and orbital pairing explain why only two electrons can fit in one atomic orbital. Electron configuration describes how electrons are arranged in an atom’s orbitals. It is written with three parts: the principal quantum number, n, the orbital type, or subshell, and a superscript that shows how many electrons are in that subshell. For example, 2p4 means four electrons in a p subshell with n = 2, and 3d8 means eight electrons in a d subshell with n = 3.

The three quantum numbers...

Shielding and orbital penetration help explain why electrons in an atom have different energies. Electrons are attracted to the positive nucleus, but they also repel one another in atoms with more than one electron. The strength of these forces depends on the charge and the distance between the particles. Opposite charges attract, like charges repel, and the force gets weaker as the particles move farther apart.

An electron that stays closer to the nucleus is held more tightly. That means...

Electron filling order in atomic orbitals follows the aufbau principle and Hund's rule. To write an electron configuration, we build atoms in order of atomic number. Starting with hydrogen and moving across the periods of the periodic table, one proton is added to the nucleus and one electron is placed into the correct subshell. This process describes the ground-state electron configurations of the elements.

The aufbau principle comes from the German word aufbau, which means "to build up." It...

Valence electrons and noble gas shorthand help show how electrons are arranged in multielectron atoms. Sodium, the alkali metal with atomic number 11, has one more electron than neon. That extra electron goes into the lowest-energy subshell available, the 3s orbital, so sodium has the configuration 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s1.

Electrons in the outermost shell, where n is highest, are called valence electrons. Electrons in the inner shells are called core electrons. Because core electrons often match a...