Question

For s, p, d and f orbitals, how many electrons can each hold?

Answer 1

Hint: The answer here is based on the general concept of atoms and the electronic configuration given for each atom and the answer lies in the concept of Pauli’s exclusion principle which is based on the number of orbitals present in each subshell.

Complete answer:
In the classes of general chemistry which deals with the topics of atoms and its composition structure and also the shells it has are very familiar to us.
Let us now deduce the required answer by understanding the main principle which is called the Pauli’s exclusion principle.
- Pauli’s exclusion principle states that no two electrons in the same atom can have all the four quantum numbers same (or) it can also be said that no more than two electrons can occupy the same orbital and the two electrons in the same orbitals should be of opposite spins.
- Thus, based on this principle, the ‘s’ sublevel has only one orbital and thus can maximum hold 2 electrons which are of opposite spins and hence s orbital can hold 2 electrons.
Similarly, the p sublevel has 3 orbitals and can hold a total of 6 electrons in its shell. Also, the d sublevel has 5 orbitals and thus can hold a maximum of 10 electrons in it and that of the sub level has 7 orbitals which can hold 14 electrons in its shell.

Note:
Note that the first shell can hold 2 electrons and the second shell up to 8 electrons and the third shell can hold 18 electrons and so on but their subshells can accommodate a maximum of 14 electrons which is for the f sublevel.