Recent content by Mark S 2014

Thanks, much appreciated.

Yes I get that it's a poorly worded question. I'm in my first year of a chemistry degree and we are just going through atomic orbitals. I just don't really get the significance of the different phases in each lobe, I get that the wavefunction is like a wave and has positive and negative values...

What exactly are the phases of orbitals/wavefunctions, for example the 2px orbital in hydrogen, what does it mean for the two lobes to be in different phases ?