Orbitals

[Ben 1B]

How do you solve 1D.23 which asks how many orbitals can have the following quantum numbers in an atom? Is there a shortcut to finding out how many orbitals can have certain quantum numbers? Thanks!

[SnehinRajkumar1L]

Well, in the case of the question, we can look at part a.
You know that n = 2 and l = 1, meaning that it is in the p orbital. So, the orientation of the p orbitals doesn't matter and thus, there are 3 possible orbitals.
For part b, there is only one that can have those three quantum numbers because it specifies the orientation as well.

[Nikki Razal 1L]

Once you find out what "l" is, you can figure out how many orbitals there are because to find the number of orbitals you can plug "l" into the equation 2*l+1, and that will give you the number of orbitals. Or you can think that ml=-l,...0...,+l, and the number of values you get also = the number of orbitals.. For example, if l=1, ml= -1,0,1, and because there are 3 values for ml, you have 3 orbitals

[Samudrala_Vaishnavi 3A]

Finding the number of orbitals doesn't have a short cut to my knowledge, but it's not super hard to do. Know that l=0 is an s orbital, l=1 is a p, l=2 is a d orbital, and l=3 is an f-orbital. so, spdf. Btw, we get the l from the n or the shell number and l always is less than n. So for n=2 , for instance, l= 0,1. To find the number of orbitals, find the ml number which is just, (l, l-1, and -l) which gives you the "range of values" your orbitals can be. So for l=2, a d-orbital we have ml =(2,1,-2), so a range of (-2,-1, 0, 1, 2). Therefore, it has 5 orbitals!

[lwon Dis2I]

What is the donut in the atom orbital dz^2 diagram?