Question

The electronic configuration of silicon is ______ and that of sulphur is _____.
A. Silicon-$2,8,1$ ; Sulphur-$2,8,6$
B. Silicon-$2,8,4$ ; Sulphur-$2,8,3$
C. Silicon-$2,8,2$ ; Sulphur-$2,8,6$
D. Silicon-$2,8,4$ ; Sulphur-$2,8,6$

Answer 1

Hint: The electronic configuration of an element basically describes how electrons are distributed in its atomic orbitals and they generally follow a standard notation where the atomic shells are written in sequence along with electrons present in it. At times the electrons containing atomic subshells are also placed in sequence with the number of electrons present in them written in superscript.

Complete step by step answer:
Primarily, to find the electronic configurations of the atom, we must find their respective Atomic numbers.
Atomic number of $Si=14$
Hence, the electronic configuration of $Si=2,8,4$
Now, proceeding with Sulphur
Atomic number of $S=16$
Hence, the electronic configuration of $S=2,8,6$
So, the correct answer is “Option D”.

Note: One is advised to always keep in mind while calculating electronic configuration of an atom that each shell can contain only a fixed number of electrons for example the first shell can hold up to two electrons and the second shell can hold up to eight electrons and the general formula to find the fixed number is that the $n^{th}$ shell can in principle hold up to $2\left(n^2\right)$ electrons.
Seeing the above solutions, we came to conclude that option D is correct and options A, B and C are incorrect.