CHEMISTRY COMMUNITY

In Dr.Lavelle's lecture he talked about how the quantum number ml is like a range of values from +l to -l. I was wondering if it is a range how do we know which quantum number it actually is?

Each magnetic quantum number refers to a specific orbital of a subshell. So unless it's specified, we don't know which quantum number it is.

ml doesn't only range from -1 to 1, when l is 2 ml ranges from -2 to 2 cause when l = 2 we're talking about the d subshell which has 5 orbitals and -2 to 2 each represent one of those orbitals

To clarify, the range only indicates the "possible values" of ml (orbitals) , which is based on the value of l. L indicates the subshells s, p, d, f etc., with l = 0 representing s, 1 representing p, and so on. It would be better to visualize this concept by looking at the periodic table. The final valence electron of H and He are both in n = 1, l = 0, ml = 0(1s). Li and Be are in n = 2, l = 0, ml = 0(2s). The final valence electron of B, C, N, O, F, Ne are all in the 2p subshell l but have different values for ml.
B and C are in ml = -1, N and O are in ml = 0, and F and Ne are in ml = 1. Note that there are two electrons in an orbital. You could observe from this pattern that the subshell s(l=0) has 1 orbital(ml=0), and the subshell p has 3 orbirtals(ml = -1,0,or1). Therefore d would have 5 orbitals, and f would have 7, and so on.

Hope this helps!!




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