THE Electronic Configuration

•Instead, these scientists believed that there

is only a probability that the electron
can be found in a certain volume in space
around the nucleus. This volume or region of
space around the nucleus where the electron
is most likely to be found is called an
atomic orbital. Thus, we could only guess the
most probable location of the electron at
a certain time to be within a certain volume
of space surrounding the nucleus.
• The quantum mechanical model of the
atom
comes from the mathematical solution
to the Schrodinger equation.
•The quantum mechanical model views an
electron as a cloud of negative charge
having a certain geometrical shape. This
model shows how likely an electron could be
found in various locations around the nucleus.
However, the model does not give any
information about how the electron moves
•Figure 4 shows that the darker an area, the
greater is the probability of finding the
electron in that area. The quantum mechanical
model also gives information about the
energy of the electron. The model also describes
the region of space around the
nucleus as consisting of shells. These shells are
also called principal or main energy
levels. The principal energy levels or shells may
have one or more sublevels. These
sublevels are assigned with letters: s, p, d, f, and g
as shown in Table 2.
•Q6.Based on Table 2, how many types of orbitals
are in principal energy level three (3)?
•Q7.How many atomic orbitals are in the highest
sublevel of principal energy level (3)?
•Orbitals have specific energy values. They have
particular shapes and direction
in space. The s orbitals are spherical, and p
orbitals are dumbbell-shaped, as shown in
Figure 5. Because of the spherical shape of an s
orbital, the probability of finding an electron at
a given distance from the nucleus in an s orbital
does not depend on direction, unlike the three
kinds of p orbitals which are oriented along the
x, y, and z
axes. So they different orientations in space, px,
py, and pz.
•The shapes of other orbitals (d and f orbitals)
were derived from complex calculation
and will not be discussed in this module.
•In an atom, electrons and the nucleus
interact to make the most stable
arrangement possible. The way in which
electrons are distributed in the different
orbitals
around the nucleus of an atom is called the
electron configuration.
• Activity 3: Electron Configurations
• Objectives:
•  Write the electron configuration of
the elements in the third period;
•  Determine the pattern of filling the
orbitals based on the given distribution
for the
first 10 elements; and
• Devise rules in filling up the orbitals.