Lecture #14, Monday, October 26th

Lecture started with a continuation of the Bohr model. The Bohr model allows us to calculate the energy levels of the orbitals in a hydrogen atom. It is a simple model, and works very well for atoms containing only one electron (like hydrogen), but goes to shit for pretty much every other atom. This tells chemists a very important bit of information. If we have more than one electron, the electrons will interact with each other. These electron interactions alter the overall energy.

In chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 it's all about the electrons. How do they interact? How can we get them lower in energy? What happens when I gain or remove electrons? We will look into all these aspects of electrons as we go forward.

We talked about theories from the early 1900's that led to quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics describes the energies and electronic arrangement of electrons mathematically and allows us to analyze how electrons orbit the nucleus. The electrons orbit the nucleus in orbitals, which have different shapes and energies.

Be sure how to draw all the s, p, and d orbitals!

We can now get to the part where we can arrange the orbitals in increasing energy and start to place electrons in these orbitals. I briefly touched on this in class on Monday and will continue on with this discussion on Wednesday.