Electron Configuration of Atoms

In this section, we're going to be talking about the electron configuration of atoms. What an electron configuration is an abbreviated form of listing all of the orbital subshells that contain electrons in a particular atom. In order to do this, we need to realize that those quantum numbers we that we were just talking about actually refer

to different locations on the periodic table. And it's actually true that the modern periodic table is put together based off of quantum numbers themselves. So, the first quantum number is n, and these refer to rows in the periodic table. So, as we go down the periodic table, our n value tends to increase.

The other quantum number is l, which refers to different types of orbital subshells. So, periods 1 and 2, and these two columns all the way to the left are going to be our s block. And when we're discussing electrons coming from this block, l is going to be equal to zero. When l is equal to 1, we're going to be

dealing with the p block, and that's periods 13 through 18. And then when l is equal to 2, we're dealing with the d block, which is periods 3 through 12. So, there are different specific blocks on the periodic table. And one thing I wanted to point out that we previously discussed is that an s orbital can hold

two electrons. Well, that's why there's two columns in the s block. P orbitals can hold six electrons. That's why there's six periods in the p block, and d orbitals can hold 10 electrons, and that's why there's 10 periods in our d block here. And that's related to the number of electrons our orbitals can

hold. So, there is an f block. Not going to talk about it, but the f block is that piece um when you look at periodic tables, sometimes they have extra elements floating off there. Um not going to really discuss the f block elements. So, one of the things you need to notice is that the numbering for n