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Ch.5 - Periodicity & Electronic Structure of Atoms

Chapter 5, Problem 110c

Write the symbol, give the ground-state electron configuration, and draw an orbital-filling diagram for each of the following atoms. Use the abbreviation of the preceding noble gas to represent the inner-shell electrons. 

(c) The heaviest actinide metal

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Hello everyone today. We have been given the following problem, identified a symbol provide the condensed electron configuration and draw the orbital diagram for the heaviest naturally occurring element. So the heaviest naturally occurring element is going to be uranium. And if we look on the periodic table, uranium has an atomic number of 92. And so what we need to do is we need to find out what period is in And we can note that is in period seven or row seven. We then need to take a look at the preceding noble gas. Why the noble gas? Because the noble gas that comes directly before the element in question is going to give us the condensed form. And so the noble gas that comes directly before, which will be in our group eight elements. The last column is going to be Reagan RN. and Reagan has a total of 86 electrons. So he said the Iranian has an atomic number of 92 with the atomic number is equal to the number of protons that we have. So what we can do is we can take that 92 electrons. A number of protons is also equal to the number of electrons as well. And so what we can do is we can take Our protons, 92 or electrons and subtract that By our 86 electrons from our right on. And then we get six electrons left. So we're going to just note that we have our six electrons left and a principle that we have to take into account. It's known as the off ball principal. That is the off ball principle and this is just a way to detail how electrons are filled in, filled into orbital's. And that generally falls. The principle that we're going to go from our seven s orbital's to our five F to our six D. So since we only have six electrons remaining, we don't actually have enough electrons to completely fill the five F orbital. So the first thing we're gonna do is we're going to actually put our six D one first and then we're going to start filling our five F. Because the off ball principle says that not only does it tell us how electrons are filled into the orbital's, but it says that electrons fill in the lowest orbital first and so six D is a lot lower than five F. So our final answer for our condensed formula is going to be our raid on our noble gas and brackets followed by our usual seven S two, Our five F 3 Followed by our six D 1. So you put one electron in our 60 orbital and then we put three in our f orbital and then the two in the s orbital gives us our remaining six electrons. And so this is going to be our condensed formula here. This gives us our answer choice of C. With this condensed formula here and as for the orbital diagram as it's already written here, we can see that we filled in our 123 orbital's to R. Five F sub shell, and then we placed one in our sixth D. Sub shell. And so that's why answer choice C. Is the best answer overall, I hope that this helped, and until next time.