f orbitals [ENDORSED]

[Valeria Morales]

Hi,

This is more of a general question. Are we ever going to focus on the f orbitals, or are we just supposed to have the understanding that they exist?

[Chem_Mod]

What we covered were the quantum numbers for all shells and sub-shells.

What I covered in more detail were the s-block, p-block, and 1st row of the d-block as these are more relevant for general chemistry and biochemistry.

[Sophia Henry]

I think it is important to be aware of the concept of f orbitals and the nature of elements who have electrons residing in f orbitals. We have definitely seen some course content focus on the concept of f orbitals and I want to share with you some of the topics that relate to the f orbitals and its significance within the context of this class.
Something specific about the f orbitals and the way they have been addressed in Chem 14A: the textbook. The online textbook that can be accessed through Achieve covers precisely just "how much" we "need to know" about the f orbitals for this class. A section that you can specifically look at is 1F.1 -- Periodicity and The General Structure of the Periodic Table in the textbook. This section goes over the f block and f orbitals and how they fit into our understanding of electron configurations and electron donation. Something important to understand that will help you understand why f block elements aren't really touched upon heavily in this class: F block elements don’t tend to participate in much bond formation because The further down the periodic table you get, the higher the period numbers get, and the more electron-rich the elements become but the less reactive they are in the f block so there isn't much interaction in th enatural world between elements in the f block. As such, many of the higher atomic number elements that are big enough to have electrons in an f orbital belong to this category of often-non-reacting elements.