Question

Carbon has an atomic number of 6, but the following orbital notation for carbon is incorrect. Explain the error in terms of the rules for electron arrangements.
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I know it's wrong according to Hund's rule, but I'm not sure WHY it's wrong according to that.
I also have no idea how to read these orbital notations, so it would help if I knew how to do that.

Answer 1

you may think of electron-electron repulsions to get a feel of why two electrons cannot occupy the same orbital when other orbitals are empty

Answer 2

what does Hund's rule say ?

Answer 3

my problem is that the orbital notation doesn't even look incorrect to me based on what my lessons taught me.

Answer 4

How many orbitals do you see in the given diagram ?

Answer 5

Hund's rule basically states that orbitals are each occupied by one electron before any orbital will attain a second electron.

Answer 6

1s, 2s, and 2p are all orbitals, right? so 3 orbitals?

Answer 7

Nope.

\(p\) is a subshell, it contains \(3\) orbitals : \(p_x, p_y, p_z\).

In your diagram, each square box represents an orbital.
Count the number of square boxes again, how many orbitals do we have ?

Answer 8

5?

Answer 9

right, fist lets get the terminology straight :

shell
subshell
orbital

do you what they are, or how to think of them ?

Answer 10

http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/18466/difference-between-shells-subshells-and-orbitals

I did some looking and found this

Answer 11

good, just for practice try answering this

how many shells are there below, can you point them ?

Answer 12

From what my mom is telling me, 1 would be a shell and s would be its subshell.
2 would be a shell, s and p are its subshells.

So 2 shells? 1 and 2?

Answer 13

Perfect! below are the 2 shells :