0.1.3: Predicting Electron Configurations
- Page ID
- 59576
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A Note from Dr. Haas: If you're reading this, I expect you know the general shapes of atomic orbitals, which directions they point in a Cartesian coordinate system, and where their nodes lie in space. You'll also need to know whether those orbitals contain electrons or not; and this means you must know the electron configuration of any atom or ion. The electron configuration of any atom or ion is easy to predict if you know where the element is located on the periodic table.
Before we go on, I will point out that there are fundamental concepts that I assume you know from your previous chemistry experience:
- You know symbols of elements and how to find atomic number of any given element on a periodic table, given its symbol.
- You know that atoms are neutral, and that they have the same number of total electrons as their number of protons, which is the same as the atomic number.
- You know that electrons each have a minus one (-1), negative charge, so...
- negatively charged ions have additional electrons compared to their corresponding atom
- positively charged ions are deficient in electrons compared to their corresponding atom
- the absolute value of the charge tells you the difference in the number of electrons in the atom and ion
Please read the following subsections and complete the embedded example exercises.