Friday, 10 October 2008
Orbitals
In Mr Beaumont's lesson we were doing orbitals. He showed us how P orbitals and how they go in X, Y and Z directions, but how do the electrons actually go around in them because they cannot go to the origin like the diagram showed because isn't that where the nucleus is? I am confused about it.
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2 comments:
To Steve,
Orbitals are only the most likely place to find an electron. They can even travel through the nucleus. The 'lines' used to describe shells are levels of energy, don't think of them as a limiting feature just a probability.
By the way have you got a text book yet? If not I have one for you to collect.
Steve,
The 'shapes' of the Orbitals we drew and looked at in the lesson are only a 'best guess'.
To plot the path of an object, you both need to know where that object is and where it is likely to be in the future, the position and the momentum. This cannot be done for electrons. Remember I mentioned Mr Heisenberg and his Uncertainty Principle? I wasn't making it up!! Basically he stated that you can't know with any degree of precision the position and momentum of an electron, i.e. where it is and where it's off to next!This makes it impossible to plot an orbit for an electron around a nucleus with anything approaching accuracy.
Imagine we take a 'snap-shot' of the electron in the 1s orbital of a hydrogen atom, then an instant later take another. Plot these positions on a diagram, we know where they are at that given time but have no idea how it got from position 1 to position 2. In other words, where it went between the first instant and the second. If you keep doing this over and over you will gradually build up a 3D 'map' of the places that the electron is likely to be.
This 3D region of space is where you will most likely find the electron most of the time. It is this that we call the Orbital. Try drawing that in a text book or an exam and you'll soon get yourself in a mess, which is why we tend to simplify the diagrams and the shapes of the orbitals.
Hope that helps.
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