Electrons

Question 1

John Alexander Reina Newlands (prior to Mendeleev’s time) published a paper on what?

Answer 1

John Newlands published a paper on the periodicity of elements comparing (at least the first two rows) the elements to a musical scale. “Lithium may be sodium but merely an octave higher. Perhaps they are in fact the same note”

Question 2

What was the response John Newlands received when he presented his paper to lecturers in the Royal Academy?

Answer 2

“Music is art and chemistry is science. Now describing science in an artistic way might be a fine parlour trick for helping little babies or women understand the work you do but they have no place in the Royal Academy!” It was later discovered, after his death, that his analogies were barely analogies at all and he was in fact right in his presumptions

Question 3

Who was Neils Bohr?

Answer 3

Niels Henrik David Bohr was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.

Question 4

How did Neils Bohr write his PHD thesis?

Answer 4

Neils Bohr’s handwriting was so bad he had to dictate his PHD thesis to his mother

Question 5

What is the energy that comes off electrons referred to as?

Answer 5

Energy only comes off electrons as Quanta. This is the basis of Quantum mechanics

Question 6

What is the Bohr Model?

Answer 6

In atomic physics, the Rutherford–Bohr model or Bohr model or Bohr diagram, introduced by Niels Bohr and Ernest Rutherford in 1913, depicts the atom as a small, positively charged nucleus surrounded by electrons that travel in circular orbits around the nucleus—similar in structure to the Solar System, but with attraction provided by electrostatic forces rather than gravity. It was used to describe the energy level of a single electron within a hydrogen atom. However when applied to more complicated atoms the model failed due to the assumption of circular orbits.

Question 7

How do electrons behave differently to particles?

Answer 7

Electrons dont behave like particles they are better described as waves or Wave Particle Dualities

Question 8

How can you think of electron waves?

Answer 8

Think of them as resonance in the universe and just like a string vibrating on a guitar produces multiple notes electrons can exist in a number of different harmonics

Question 9

What is a useful analogy for remembering where electrons exist?

Answer 9

Electrons exist in orbitals a bit like the individual notes on a keyboard. The orbitals tone isn’t complete until it has 2 electrons within it. Orbitals exist within shells.

Question 10

When refering to standing waves what must n (number of wavelengths) always be expressed as?

Answer 10

n must always be expressed as a whole integers anything in between is not allowed. A partial orbital would cause destructive interference

Question 11

How many orbital shells can an atom potentially have?

Answer 11

An atom can have up to 4 Orbital Shells. These are named

sOrbital (fits 2 electrons)

pOrbital (fits 6 electrons)

dOrbital (fits 10 electrons)

fOrbital (fits 14 electrons)

Question 12

What do most lighter elements have in common with a musical scale?

Answer 12

The 6 electrons in the pOrbital and the two electrons in the sOrbital are the 8 electrons referred to in the octet rule. “The desire for most lighter elements to have 8 electrons in their outer shell” Just as a muscial scale played pushes towards 8 notes for resolution

Question 13

How can you think of an incomplete electron configuration?

Answer 13

An icomplete electron congfiguration can be thought of as a cacophonous symphony playing at different keys and tempos and the closer you are to harmony the worse it sounds until one final note seeps in, the 8th note, and everything crisps into full resolution and the atom settles into complete harmony, the harmony of the noble gases

Question 14

What are Electron Configurations?

Answer 14

Electron configurations are a condensed way of showing where all of an atoms electrons are

1. Number of the shell
2. Letter of the Orbital
3. Number of electrons in that Orbital

For Example:

Question 15

What are the basic properties of the dOrbital?

Answer 15

Is introduced in the third row of the periodic table

The third shell adds a third type of orbital, the 5 part harmony of the dOrbital

2 electrons per part for a total of 10 electrons

dxy dyz dxy dx2-y2 dz2

Question 16

What shapes the order that electrons fill shells?

Answer 16

As building the 3rd orbital requires alot of energy electrons actually go into the fourth shell of the s orbital (4s) before going into the dOrbital.

This trend continues so to remember what order electrons fill shells write the following:

Question 17

What is a useful way to remember the order of orbitals when writing Electron Configurations?

Answer 17

Drawing a diagonal line through the following table

Question 18

Why aren’t dOrbitals and fOrbitals as desperate to be completely filled?

Answer 18

dOrbitals and fOrbitals don’t need to be filled as much as they are shielded beneath sOrbitals of the following shell.

Yes these incomplete orbitals affect the element but as they are shielded by the outer sOrbitals they are generally less reactive and happy to bump electrons along from atom to atom making the conductive

Question 19

What is the instrumentation of the orbitals?

Answer 19

sOrbitals and pOrbitals are like trumpets and violins, it’s really terrible when they sound bad

dOrbitals and fOrbitals are the bass notes and can hide a bit under the rest of the orchestra so it isn’t as catastrophic when they are incomplete

Question 20

How are orbitals helpful for predicting the results of reactions?

Answer 20

Orbitals are helpful for predicting reaction reulsts as it is important to know how much energy is required to remove an electron from an atom to form a positively charged Ion (Ionization Energy)

Question 21

Removing several electrons from an atom is a stepwise process. Describe the process and the energy levels required to remove electrons

Answer 21

If there are several electrons being removed this is a step wise process starting with the electron eith the highest energy level (the outer most one)

Since the outer most electron has the highest energy it takes the least amount of energy to remove

More energy is needed to remove the second one and so on

When all electrons in outer most shell are removed there is a huge energy jump required to remove an electron from the next shell down because that shell will be isoelectrically analagous to a noble gas

Question 22

When are atoms isotopically the same and isoelectrically the same?

Answer 22

Atoms are isotopically the same when they have the same number of protons and neutrons

Atoms are isoelectrically the same when they have the same number of electrons

Question 23

When do you add electrons to an atom? What is Electron Affinity?

Answer 23

Electrons are added to an atom to establish a stable 2 or 8 electron shell configuration. Just like with ionization energy, there’s a discreet jump in energy levels when adding an electron

This energy is called Electron Affinity

Question 24

Where do you find the four types of orbitals in regard to the periodic table?

Answer 24

On the left hand side of the table you have the sOrbitals

In the middle are the dOrbitals

Top right are the pOrbitals

Below are the fOrbitals

Question 25

What is the extensive explanation of electron waves as wave particle dualities without using analogies?

Answer 25

There are a number of everywhere permiating fields in our universe, one of those is the electron field. In order for an electron to exist there has to be an excitation of the electron field and we can describe those excitations as waves, just as a wave in the ocean is an excitation of the water. At any given moment the elcetron can be anywhere a long the function of the wave but waves are defined not by harsh boundaries, instead they are strong in some areas and weak in others. The strength of the wave at one certain point in time and space determines how likely it is that you will find the electron there at any given time if you measure. And so if we are trying to understand reality we should not think of electrons as circling around the nucleus of an atom, as planets around a star, but instead as an excitation around the nucleus. The shape of that excitation is the orbital. Orbitals are precicely the reason that everything exists. They are the root and the key and the nexus of not just checmistry, but existence.