Nodes

[Jessica Beroukhim 3K]

Can anyone explain the relation between nodes of a wavefunction and the nodal planes on the orbitals? In particular there is a paragraph in the textbook on page 39 that basically says "each wavefunction has n-1 nodes" and next to that paragraph there is an illustration of the shape of p subshells with a nodal plane between the two parts. Am I using these words all wrong?

[Ruohan Sun 3I]

A nodal plane is also called a angular node. The number of nodal planes (angular nodes) is l, and by subtracting the number of nodes (n−1) by the number of nodal planes you can get the number of radial nodes (nodal surfaces), which is n−l−1

[AtreyiMitra2L]

Alright so a wavefunction is just referring to a subshell (s, p, d, f...). n - 1 is just referring to the number of nodal planes within each subshell. Like in n = 2 (l is 1 or p), there is one nodal plane.

[Camille Ng 1D]

Nodes are areas with no probability of an electron occupying the area. To calculate how many nodes there are you just need to do n-1.

[Sheel Shah 1H]

electrons will not occupy the values at nodes