General Chemistry

Hund’s rule states that electrons will fill all the degenerate orbitals (equal in energy) with parallel spins (both arrows up or down) first before pairing up in one orbital. We can also formulate it as the lowest energy configuration for an atom is the … Read more

The Pauli’s exclusion principle states that no two electrons in an atom can have the same four quantum numbers. Now, what does this practically mean? Essentially, the implication of Pauli’s exclusion principle is that when two electrons are in the same orbital, they must have … Read more

Rydberg formula is used for calculating the wavelength or the energy of the light emitted during electron transitions. So, first, what are the electron transitions, and how are they associated with light? The first thing you need to know here … Read more

Quantum numbers tell us the energy level, the number and the type of orbitals, and the spin of the electron. Collectively, they all describe the electron configurations. There are four quantum numbers that we are going to discuss: The Principal … Read more

In today’s post, we will talk about the atomic orbitals. So, first, what is an orbital? In a formal, quantum mechanical definition, orbitals are essentially probability distribution maps for electrons within atoms. In a simpler version, think of orbitals as … Read more

Aufbau’s Principle, Hund’s Rule, and Pauli’s Exclusion Principle are rules for writing electron configurations, so go over the main principles of electron configurations if you need to before we start discussing them. Aufbau’s Principle Aufbau (German aufbauen, “to build up”) … Read more

In orbitals diagrams, the orbitals are shown as boxes, and the electrons in them as arrows pointing up or down. Each box represents one orbital, and each arrow indicates one electron. This is a way of showing the electron configuration … Read more

In the previous post, we talked about electron configurations, what they show, how to read, and how to write them based on energy levels and sublevels. As a reminder, electron configurations show the number and location of electrons in an … Read more

In the previous post, we discussed the nature of light and how the sunlight or the light from an ordinary light bulb (white light) contains a mixture of almost all the colors in the rainbow. This can be confirmed by … Read more