Atom Shapes: Visualizing Electron Clouds

[clm321]

im having a little trouble trying to picture an atom in my head with accurate electron cloud designee and shape can someone give me some pictures or a site that might help.
every picture i ever see of an atom is with the electron orbital in curricular shapes but i know there is a wide eray of different orbital shapes.

 

[NeoDevin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_orbital#Orbitals_table" has some diagrams.

 

[clm321]

thank you that is actualy a good site. but I am also having troubles getting to imagine how it moves through these orbital and back to the ground state and then back to the other orbitals

 

[alxm]

Well, s - 1 lobe, p - 2 lobes, d - 4 lobes and so on.

It's really highly analogous to a standing wave (on a string or whatever) only in three dimensions.

Molecular orbitals, in turn, can be visualized as combinations of atomic ones.

 

[clm321]

ok but is there maybe i computer generated video i could watch of an electron going from a ground state to an excited state with complicated orbitals such as an excited oxygen atom

 

[espen180]

http://winter.group.shef.ac.uk/orbitron/

This is a gallery of all the atomic orbitals up to 7g and some molecular and hybrid orbitals.