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Topic: help with electron orbitals question  (Read 792 times)

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Offline newstudent22

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help with electron orbitals question
« on: September 28, 2020, 05:00:56 PM »
Answer key says (a) is the excited state but i don't understand how. Problem is attached as a picture
« Last Edit: September 28, 2020, 06:57:17 PM by newstudent22 »

Offline Corribus

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Re: help with electron orbitals question
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2020, 12:15:08 AM »
How do you usually fill orbitals if they have the same energy? Are you familiar with Hunds rules?
What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?  - Richard P. Feynman

Offline Enthalpy

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Re: help with electron orbitals question
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2020, 09:26:19 AM »
Orbitals are often imagined as independent from an other, filled or not with one or two electrons. This image is comfortable, but not accurate.

One first departure from this image is the electric repulsion between the electrons. If two electrons are closer to an other as a mean, this combination is energetically less favourable.

An other departure results from the fermionic nature of electrons. This reaches farther than the exclusion pinciple. The wave function of the set of electrons must be antisymmetric (including the spins), which shapes the orbitals. Figures for helium, with two electrons on varied orbitals, spins parallel (orthohelium) and antiparallel (parahelium), there
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/helium.html
Notice the energy difference, in the order of 1eV. Interaction of the magnetic moments explains only about as much as the fine structure does, that is, far less.

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