Electron Shielding Question

[Adam_Ventura_1H]

I had a question about electron shielding. I believe that in lecture we went over how inner electrons shield the outer electrons from electrostatic attraction to the nucleus, which is positively charged. However, I am not sure what this means or what the relevance of is. Hope that someone can explain a little more.

[Chance Herbert 3A]

The most important thing to understad is that electron shielding is the same as repulsion. For each subsequent shell or period, there is an added ring or shell outside of the inner shells containing electrons. These electrons on the inside will repel the outer valence electrons, resulting in an overall lesser electrostatic attraction to the nucleus!

[MichaelRaad_1F]

I think it means that the inner shell electrons shield the electrons in the outer shell because the nucleus is positively charged and the electrons are negatively charged so they attract. The inner shell electrons repel the outer shell electrons because both are negatively charged. The inner electrons therefore shield the outer electrons from the nucleus's charge.

[Mikayla Kwok 3K]

Shielding causes the outermost electrons to be more loosely held due to the lower effective nuclear charge. Thus, shielding can lower the ionization energy of atoms, by making these loosely held electrons more likely to be removed, and increase the size of atoms, by not pulling the outer electrons too close to the nucleus.

[Evie Li_1H]

In his lecture, I think Lavelle used the example of if you were at a bonfire and stand near the flame you can feel the heat easily. If someone stands between you and the fire, you still feel the heat, but not as much and the person standing in front of you feels it more. You are acting as a valence electron and the other person is an inner electron that is feeling more of the pull from the nucleus.

The valence electrons then are more likely to be shared or taken away from the atom. Like how Na (sodium) is naturally in a Na+ state, the furthermost electron is not held on super tightly, so a lot of the time sodium is missing one electron. This helps when writing electron configurations, which help with forming molecules and deciding what bonds they share, whether they are ionic or covalent, and how to draw them.

Hope this helped :)

[LaurenChoi_1J]

In simplest terms, I believe it means that the inner electrons sort of act as a barrier so that the outer electrons don’t feel the pull of the nucleus as much.