Orbitals and Their Nodal Planes

[Stella Nguyen 1J]

Hi everyone!

I was wondering if you guys could explain to me how we can determine the number of nodal planes in an orbital? I know that the s orbital has no nodal planes, but how would we know how many nodal planes there will be for the other orbitals?

Thank you so much!

[Chloe Little 3K]

P-orbitals have one nodal plane, and d-orbitals have two nodal planes.

[Mikayla James 2A]

Hi! In a review session this week, one of the TA's mentioned that the calculation for the number of nodal planes is [n(principal quantum #)-1]. They also said that they expected that we would only need to know about nodes for the s and p, so for s its 0 and for p its 1. Hope this helps!

[LovepreetSran_3H]

s-orbitals have 0 nodal planes, p-orbitals have 1 nodal plane, d-orbitals have 2 nodal planes, and f-orbitals have 3 nodal planes.

[Brandon Carris]

You must memorize!
s has 0 nodal planes,
p has 1 nodal plane,
d has 2 nodal planes
f has 3 nodal planes.

[205323697]

what doe it actually mean to have a nodal plane?

[Aditya Desai 1A]

A nodal plane is a plane at which the probability of the electron existing there is 0.

[AngelinaYuleiGao 1B]

what doe it actually mean to have a nodal plane?

It indicates that there is no probability of finding an electron on that plane.