how do we know about electron orbitals?
Chemistry discussion, revision, exam and homework help.
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Re: how do we know about electron orbitals?There are a few postulates in Quantum Mechanics that can't be derived. Assuming these are correct, orbitals, amongst lots of other things, come out of the maths. As EVS mentioned, there have been no experimental discrepancies between the QM predictions and experiment, so it is pretty likely that the postulates are correct!
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Re: how do we know about electron orbitals?Quantum physics makes several statements that aren't proved (postulates) - to be honest, they were just educated guesses really. But they were found to work with all experiments conducted and to explain a lot of unexplained phenomena at the time, so are accepted to be true until disproved (as with all science really). Mathematical manipulation of these postulates leads to energy levels that are quantised I.E. have discrete values.
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Re: how do we know about electron orbitals?The orbitals are derived from the time independent Schrodinger Equation for the hydrogen atom:(Original post by s.aley)
how exactly
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Re: how do we know about electron orbitals?This(Original post by Bradshaw)
The orbitals are derived from the time independent Schrodinger Equation for the hydrogen atom:
