Orbitals and the Periodic Table

[VictoriaRoderick_3A]

During the lecture on 10/5 Professor Lavelle talked about how to you can tell what shape the orbital of an element is based on the periodic table, and I was confused about how this was done exactly. When he described them as blocks, where do they begin and end?

Lavelle's Periodic Table

[Ani Galfayan 1H]

Hopefully this image clears it up a bit. It's on page 45 from our textbook. The s-block includes the first two columns from the left-hand side (Li - Be), p-block includes the last 6 columns (B - He), d-block includes the columns from Sc - Zn, and the f-block includes the two rows of Lanthanoids and Actinoids, columns from Ce - Lu.
After categorizing an atom into one of the 4 blocks, using its characteristics you can discern the shape of the atomic orbitals.
The characteristics are such that those in the s-block have spherical shapes and no nodal planes; those in the p-block have two lobes and are perpendicular to each other and so on.
However, these wave functions only help to describe an electron in an atom. We don't know the exact location due to the indeterminacy in position and momentum.