Both vanadium and its 3+ ion are paramagnetic. Refer to their electron configurations to explain this statement.

Electron Configurations

Quantum-mechanical theory describes the behavior of electrons in atoms.

Since chemical bonding involves the transfer or sharing of electrons, quantum-mechanical theory helps us understand and describe chemical behavior. As we saw in Chapter 8, electrons in atoms exist within orbitals. An electron configuration for an atom shows the particular orbitals that electrons occupy for that atom. For example, consider the ground state—or lowest energy state—electron configuration for a hydrogen atom:

The electron configuration indicates that hydrogen’s one electron is in the 1s orbital. Electrons generally occupy the lowest energy orbitals available. Since the 1s orbital is the lowest energy orbital in hydrogen, hydrogen’s electron occupies that orbital. If we could write electron configurations for all the elements, we could see how the arrangements of the electrons within their atoms correlate with the element’s chemical properties. However, the Schrödinger equation solutions (the atomic orbitals and their energies) that we described in Chapter 8 are for the hydrogen atom.

What do the atomic orbitals of other atoms look like? What are their relative energies?

Transcribed Image Text:

H Orbital 1s¹ -Number of electrons in orbital