Atomic orbitals Definition and 40 Threads

A physics question for those more atomically inclined than myself. Atomic clocks are said to measure the frequency of oscillations. By this definition of atomic oscillation, is anything physically vibrating, or does it just mean switching between the two energy levels without excess explicit...

Hi, I am 16 year old and I am very interested in Physics. This summer I solved Schrödinger equation using griffiths' introduction to quantum physics and other sources. I achieved to get an exact solution of the wave function but I would like to plot it in a programm in order to get the 3d...

Oritals, other than s-orbitals, don't have spherical symmetry while the atomic Hamiltonian does have spherical symmetry. How is this possible?

So I've been looking at covalent bonds and come across the approx you can do of the molecular orbital for ##H^+_2## by just summing two 1s orbitals, the method is called the linear combinations of atomic orbitals, and you get what is below which I believe is exact in this case since the 1s...

I have a belief from something I read on the internet that the superscript 1 means that this is a singlet state so it can only hold one particle but then say 3^S_0 is a triplet so it could hold three. Then the first state I mentioned couldn't have a particle and an antiparticle in it , but the...

I'm working on some stuff for particle physics and I had a few questions I wanted to ask . Heres the outline of the problem : Establish which initial states of the ppbar system amongst 1^S_0, 3^S_1, 1^P_1, 3^P_0, 3^P_1, 3^P_2, 1^D_2, 3^D_1, 3^D_2, 3^D_3 the reaction ppbar->npi^0 can...

To obtain spectroscopy on a gas like hydrogen or helium, an electric arc is passed through a container of the material, and then the emitted light is viewed through a prism which breaks it up into its component wavelengths. There are sharp lines which are formed, caused by excitation of the...

Normally, I prefer to do my own research, but I'm drawing a blank on this one. Any help would be appreciated. My understanding is that statistical mechanics accounts for all of the heat energy in a gas by the kinetic energy of the molecules. I also understand that atomic orbitals have different...

Sorry if this question has been asked before or is common knowledge. It seems to me that when one or more electrons in an atom is excited to a higher energy state, then the effective potential experienced by other electrons should be different from the potential in the ground state. Hence the...

Does the shape of atomic orbital changes when exposed to electric or magnetic field?

The Hamiltonian of an atomic electron is spherically symmetric so we expect to have symmetric distribution of electrons around the nucleus. However, as an example, p-orbitals don't have spherical symmetry and p_x-orbitals imply that electrons may be found in the x-direction with higher...

"To visualize the standing waves (or orbitals) of electrons bound to a positively charged nucleus in three dimensions, we will need a four-dimensional plot of the wave function vs. x, y, and z." http://www.grandinetti.org/electron-orbital-shapes"The wavefunctions in the N=2 family are vectors in...

Hi. I am wondering about this. I have been able to find many graphs showing what the atomic orbitals look like for hydrogen, but nothing for more complex atoms, like helium. Why is this? Now I know the Schrodinger equation for helium cannot be solved exactly, but you don't need an exact...

What cause the atomic orbitals electron configuration ? Thanks in advance

Let's take a hydrogen atom with a single electron. How many eigenvalues of position can it form (assuming you put it the atom in an x, y, z coordinate)? like 1 billion possible position eigenvalues? Is it continuous number like 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 or quantized? and either case, how many eigenvalues...

Do electrons really exist as standing waves in an atom? If so, are these standing waves what are known as atomic orbitals?

although the distance from the nucleus and shielding effect [due to more angular volume] is more for 4s orbital than a 3d orbital ,but yet the energy for a 3d orbital is more than 4s orbital, why?

I would be most grateful for some tips of interactive software, which shows the hybridized atomic orbitals overlapping in the molecule (I don't mean resulting molecular orbitals but atomic orbitals of which overlapping forms MO). And does this works also in Mathematica?

Hi guys I've been having some trouble plotting the p(x) and d(xy) atomic orbitals on Matlab. I have been given that p(x) = x*e^-(x^2 + y^2 + z^2)^0.5 and d(xy) = x*y*e^-(x^2 + y^2 x^2)^0.5 Now I want to plot these orbitals on MATLAB using mesh or the surf command and then plot the...

1. Homework Statement Draw an LCAO representation of all of the bonding orbitals for C2H2O. Be sure to clearly state the hybridization of the two carbons and the oxygen in addition to drawing the orbital representation. Also show clearly what orbital any unshared pairs occupy. 2...

If I use hydrogen-like orbitals for other atoms, how are the number of nodes and probability density affected?

Hello all, this came up in my chemistry class when our prof. showed a graph of the size of atomic orbitals (or orbital energy) in relation to the Z number (or number of protons). He did this to show that as the z number increases the size of the orbitals also decrease (because effective nuclear...

I know that the shape of s orbital is sphere, p orbital is dumbbell shaped and d orbital is like a doughnut but why do these orbitals have these shapes why not some other shape.

I am terribly confused. I have always been hearing that in the hydrogen atom, 2s and 2p orbitals have the same energy. Similarly, the 3s, 3p and 3d orbitals have the same energies. This is also suggested by the hydrogen spectrum, my professor also believes the same, and I am unable to find...

Homework Statement Compare the energies of the 1s, 2s, 3s and 3p orbitals for both the HE and He+. For He assume that one electron is always in the 1s orbital. State any other assumptions you have made 2. The attempt at a solution I think: He can be either 1s1 2s1 or 1s2 He+ has to be...

When 2 atoms bond, do all their atomic orbitals combine, or is it just the bonding orbitals that combine? For example when sodium and chlorine bond, do all their orbitals combine or is it just sodiums 3s orbital that combines with chlorines 3p orbital?

So I usually use VESTA to make my figures, and though the new version is able to do many mad things with calculated electron density isostructures and whatnot, I can't seem to just be able to throw in some clover-leaf d or p orbitals like what was done in the image below (from this paper on...

atomic orbitals, what i just know about them is they are the regions around the nucleus where the probability of finding an electron is high and that is OK with s orbital because it is spherical. but when an electron in p orbital spins the probability of finding an electron should spin...

Hi all, To my knowledge hybridization of atomc orbitals occurs only between orbitals in the same atom, with similar energies, in order to produce new atomic orbitals, identical with the same energy, to make chemical bonds with other atoms. There are sp, sp2, sp3, etc... possibilities. My...

I understand that electrons are found inside Atoms within specific orbitals, or quantized distances from the nucleus. There are a maximum number of electrons found within each orbit, etc. etc. I recently read that the reason for this quantized nature of orbitals has to do with the wave...

Can someone please direct me to a site that explains atomic orbitales well. Thanks. :cool:

Imagine there is a molecule which consists of several atoms, and for each atom there is an effective orbital, phi_i, which are not orthogonal. Now we want to construct from them a set of orthogonal orbitals, psi_i. Of course there are many ways to do this. Let W be the matrix that realizes our...

Homework Statement Draw an LCAO representation of all of the bonding orbitals for C2H2O. Be sure to clearly state the hybridization of the two carbons and the oxygen in addition to drawing the orbital representation. Also show clearly what orbital any unshared pairs occupy. Homework Equations...

Hello I didn't get something about the AO. i.e the electron configuration of C is 1s² 2s² 2p² . So we know that at the 2nd shell this has 4 electrons, 2 in s orbital + 2 in the p, right? How do we find out how the 2 electrons of p are spread in the px, py, pz? Thank you, Panos

for n=2 & l=1 we have P orbital for which magnetic quantum no. can take values -1,0,1 , now in p orbital we have 2Px, 2Py &2Pz each corresponding to vale of m like 2Px for m=-1 and so on , is this correct or 2Px can be represented by 0 0r 1 also .

Is there a particular reason why the probability density distribution function of atomic orbitals bears a similarity to the modes on a circular membrane? Is this just a coincidence? Is it not actually that similar?

1: Why are the elements of a basis set taken to be orthogonal? But in real sense atomic orbitals do overlap.

Hey everyone! I was wondering, when orbitals are hybridized, new hybrid Atomic Orbitals (AO) are formed. Now, when these hybrid atomic orbotals bond with another atomic orbitals, are molecular orbitals formed? For example, when 2 Hydrogens bond to form H2, the 1s orbitals overlap to form 2...

I have searched some books I have on Quantum Physics, and so on, but I still haven't found any useable material to learn about the Pauli exclusion pinciple, atomic orbitals, why the Periodic Table exists, or things like that, in an informal way. Thanks, Neohaven

Is anybody familiar with LCAO approximation? I'm working on my last problem for this assignment and the class text doesn't really cover it enough for me nor do my reference texts cover it enough. Does anybody know any good references so I can read more on LCAO approximation? Thanks.