ELECTRON

CONFIGURATION
WHAT IS ELECETRON
CONFIGURATION?
ELECTRON CONFIGURATION

• Electron configurations are the

summary of where the electrons are
around a nucleus. As we learned
earlier, each neutral atom has a
number of electrons equal to its
number of protons.
HISTORY OF ELECTRON
CONFIGURATION
• Niels Bohr (1923) was the
first to propose that the
periodicity in the
properties of the elements
might be explained by
the electronic structure of
the atom.
His proposals were based
on the then current Bohr
model of the atom, in which
the electron shells were
orbits at a fixed distance
from the nucleus.
WRITING ELECTRON
CONFIGURATIONS
Electron Configurations tell you
the ground state location of each
electron in an atom
What we will do now is place those
electrons into an arrangement
around the nucleus that indicates
their energy and the shape of the
orbital in which they are located.
 WHAT IS AN ORBITAL DIAGRAM?
An orbital diagram is used to
determine an atom's electron
configuration. There are
guidelines for determining
the electron configuration of an
atom. An electron will move to
the orbital with lowest energy.
Each orbital can hold only
one electron pair. Electrons will
 What is the
How many types of maximum number of
What energy levels these orbitals can electrons that can
Orbital sublevel
can they exist at? exist at any energy be held by these
level? orbitals at any
energy level?
1st and
s 1 2
higher
2nd and
p 3 6
higher
3rd and
d 5 10
higher
4th and
f 7 14
higher
 RULES FOR FILLING ORBITALS
There are three rules for filling
orbitals.
• Aufbau Principle: Electrons always
fill the lowest energy levels first.
• Electrons start at the bottom
and work their way up.
• This also implies that electrons
fill orbitals the same way
every time.
• Pauli Exclusion Principle: No two electrons
with the same energy characteristics
can occupy an orbital at the same
time.
• One electron must be spin up and
the other electron must be spin
down.
• Hund’s Rule: When filling multiple
orbitals of the same sublevel (p, d, and