Question

How many orbitals are in the $4p$ subshell?

Answer 1

Hint: As we know that there are four quantum numbers which tell us about the shells, subshells, orbitals and spin of the electrons present in the valence shell. Among these numbers, we know that magnetic orbital quantum number is the one that tells about the orbitals in a subshell.

Complete answer:
As we know that the principal quantum number tells us about the shell to which the electron belongs. It also tells about the size, energy level and maximum number of electrons that a shell can accommodate. The shells are represented by K, L, M, N and so on. The principal quantum number is represented by \['n'\]. In the given question we have $n = 4$ which says that the electron is present at the fourth energy level.

Then we have a second quantum number that is azimuthal quantum number which tells us about the subshell to which the electron belongs and it is represented by $'l'$. The subshells are represented by s, p, d, f and so on. Thirdly, we have a magnetic quantum number which is represented as ${m_l}$ and it tells us about the total number of orbitals present in a given subshell. For a given subshell there are $2l + 1$ values of magnetic quantum number.

We know that the p-orbital possess the value of magnetic quantum number as $l = 1$ and putting the value of this number in formula to calculate the subshell we would get $2 \times 1 + 1 = 3$ orbitals and these p-orbitals possess the sub-orbitals which are commonly given as ${p_x},{p_y}{p_z}$. Therefore, we can say that there are a total of three orbitals in $4p$ subshell.

Note: Always remember that the magnetic quantum determines the number of orbitals in the subshells and generally s-orbital contains one orbital only as the value of azimuthal quantum number is zero, p-orbital contains three orbitals, d-orbital contains five orbitals and f-orbital contains seven orbitals.