I Electron wavefunction as an overlap of orbitals

1. Jun 4, 2017

WrongMan

so im finishing up my studies of intro to quantum mechanics, and this is not in my book and looking at previous exams i have to know this for single electron atoms/ions.
one of the problems was somethin like
"the wave function of an electron is the overlap of the orbitals:
Ψ=aΨ1s+i/√3Ψ2p+¾Ψ3s
find avg energy. what is the probability of measuring it?"
i dont want help solving this, can you just point me to an website/book that covers this? thank you

2. Jun 4, 2017

Staff: Mentor

"Something like" or "exactly like"? If I'm understanding the question properly by reading "overlap" as "superposition", it only makes sense for one particular value of $a$. And (again, if I'm understanding the question properly) the answer is going to be in your book - somewhere it will talk about expectation values of measurements.

3. Jun 5, 2017

DrDu

I wouldn't call it the "overlapp" but a superposition. The orbitals making up the superposition are orthogonal, so technically, they have no overlapp.

4. Jun 5, 2017

WrongMan

thanks for yur answers sorry about the overlap thing it was a translation problem.
and the problem i presentd was in an actual exam but all of them always have a problem like that.
im gonna take a carefull look at both books ive got