nodal planes [ENDORSED]

[Emily Mei 1B]

What is important/what do we need to know about nodal planes in the atomic orbitals?

[Tia Tomescu 2D]

Based off of the homework questions in the textbook, believe we need know how many nodal planes there are for the s p d orbitals. (However, if you look at the assigned homework, questions regarding the nodal planes were skipped.)

[Rachel Formaker 1E]

Nodal planes are planes on which there is no chance that an electron will be found.
The s-orbitals have no nodal planes, but the p- and d- orbitals do.

They are mainly of interest when we are trying to figure out the location of an electron in a given orbital.
The electron will never be at the nucleus or on the nodal plane.

[Isa Samad 1L]

Adding on to the previous point, orbitals are basically probability distributions since we know that it is impossible to find out an electron's exact position at any given time. A nodal plane is simply put, an area in which there aren't any electrons. In other words, it is where the graph of the orbital equals 0.