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Each electron has a set of four numbers, called quantum numbers, that specify it completely; no two electrons in the same atom can have the same four. That's a more precise statement of the Pauli exclusion principle Bob was discussing. (He also mentioned stillanother way of expressing this important idea.) Is there a special reason why there are four, and not three or six or fifty-nine?
Good question. There are certainly reasons, but I won't be able to explain them to you here, any more than Bob could explain where his rules were coming from. What I can offer you is a mathematical expression of those rules, which I hope will make them easier to work with and perhaps provide some insight into the underlying patterns. Okay, I can live with that. Tell me about the four numbers.
First, the "primary quantum number," which is given the symbol n, corresponds to those colored rows you saw in the chart. The lowest row, the pink one, has electrons with n=1; the yellow row is n=2, and they go up from there. All right, so n tells you which of the "main" energy levels you're in. I suppose there's another quantum number that goes with the sublevels--s, p, d, and all that.
Very good. The second quantum number is known as l. A value of l=0 corresponds to s, l=1 is p, l=2 is d, and so forth.
This all seems very abstract to me. What does l reallymean? Can you give me some concrete way to think about it?
I have two answers for that. First, l, unliken, does have an association with angular momentum. If you'd like to know more about this, click on the "advanced" button at right.
If "angular momentum" means nothing to you, don't despair. You can also picture its significance this way: l, along with n and the third quantum number, m, is responsible for determining the shape of an electron's probability cloud. Here are a few examples:
Structure of an atom
In this page we are going to discuss about explain the structure of an atom concept .Electrons revolve around the nucleus in different energy levels or shells and each shell is associated with definite energy. The energy of the K shell is the least while those of L, M, N and O shells increases progressively. We also know that any system that has least energy is the most stable.1st energy level is K shell2nd energy level is L shell3rd energy level is M shell4th energy level is N shell and so on
The outermost shell of an atom cannot accommodate more than 8 electrons, even if it has a capacity to accommodate more electrons. This is a very important rule and is also called the Octet rule. The presence of 8 electrons in the outermost shell makes the atom very stable.