Question

How do you write the orbital diagram for hydrogen?

Answer 1

The answer is based on the concept of the Pauli’s exclusion principle which states that no two electrons in the same atom can have all the quantum numbers same.

Complete answer:
The concept of Pauli’s exclusion principle and also Hund’s rule and many other concepts which come under the general chemistry part are very familiar with us.
- Now, let us see what Pauli's exclusion principle says and how the orbital diagrams can be drawn for the hydrogen atom.
- Pauli’s exclusion principle states that no two electrons in an atom can have all the quantum numbers same.
In other words, this can be stated that,
a) No more than two electrons can occupy the same orbital
b) Two electrons in the same orbital must have the opposite spins.
- Therefore, according to this rule we can assign the electrons in the orbital.
- Now, the given question has hydrogen where the atomic number of this atom is 1 and thus it has only one electron in its orbit.
- The number of protons in an atom depicts the atomic number and also the total number of protons in an atom will be always equal to the number of electrons, that is they are always equal in number.
- Therefore, there is one proton and one electron in an atom. The electronic configuration of hydrogen can be written as $1{{s}^{1}}$ that is it has one orbital with a single electron in it.
This can be represented in the orbital form as shown below,

Note:
Note that while assigning the electrons in the orbital form, three rules are to be kept in mind and also to be followed that are- Aufbau principle, Pauli’s exclusion principle and also the Hund’s rule.