Question

What is the maximum number of electrons that can be found in any orbital of an atom?

Answer 1

Hint: The structure of an atom consists of sub – atomic species like electron, proton, and neutron. The atom consists of two regions, one the nucleus that contains protons and neutrons, while another region is orbital in which the electrons are held. The orbital is the part of the sub – shells s, p, d, f that has 1, 3, 5, 7 orbital respectively.

Complete answer:
The structure of an atom contains sub atomic species like electrons, protons and neutrons. The electrons have a specified position where the probability of finding them is the highest. This place is called the orbital in any atom.
The four quantum numbers tell us the place of electrons in an atom. According to them, the principal quantum number (n) gives the number of shell, the secondary (azimuthal) quantum number $\left( \ell \right)$ gives the subshell number, magnetic number (m) gives the number of orbital, while spin quantum number (s) gives the spin. The values of n,$\ell $, and m may vary, but (s) spin quantum numbers have only two possible values which is $+\dfrac{1}{2}$ or $-\dfrac{1}{2}$.
Due to the fact that an electron can have a spin of either $+\dfrac{1}{2}$ or $-\dfrac{1}{2}$, this proves that there can be only 2 electrons accommodated in any orbital.
Hence, the maximum number of electrons that can be found in any orbital of an atom is 2 electrons.

Note:
The number of electrons in an orbital can also be identified by Pauli’s exclusion principle, that states that an orbital cannot accommodate more than two electrons with opposite spin, and no two electrons in an atom have the same set of all the four quantum numbers. s, p, d, f subshells have 1, 3, 5, 7 orbitals each that can have a maximum number of 2, 6, 10 and 14 electrons in all the sub shells respectively.