Nitrogen electronic configuration

The 7 electrons in nitrogen are in a ls 2s 2p electron configuration. Nitrogen is the first element to have at least one electron in each of 3 possible p orbitals (Figure 3.19). 

Arsenic is the third member of the nitrogen family of elements and hence possesses an outermost shell having the electron configuration of 4 The... 

Figure 5. Niels Bohr came up with the idea that the energy of orbiting electrons would be in discrete amounts, or quanta. This enabled him to successfully describe the hydrogen atom, with its single electron, In developing the remainder of his first table of electron configurations, however, Bohr clearly relied on chemical properties, rather than quantum theory, to assign electrons to shells. In this segment of his configuration table, one can see that Bohr adjusted the number of electrons in nitrogen s inner shell in order to make the outer shell, or the reactive shell, reflect the element s known trivalency.

The Lewis symbol for nitrogen, for example, represents the valence electron configuration 2s22pA.12p>112p 1 (see 1), with two electrons paired in a 2s-orbital and three unpaired electrons in different 2p-orbitals. The Lewis symbol is a visual summary of the valence-shell electron configuration of an atom and allows us to see what happens to the electrons when an ion forms. 

Give the electron configuration of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. 

On another sheet of paper, write out the electron configurations for carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, bromine, chlorine, and iodine. 

On the basis of the number of holes and the electron configurations, identify the different colored balls as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Label them in Data Table 1. (The colors of bromine, chlorine, and iodine have already been recorded for you.)... 

Although the explanation will be provided later, the configuration on the right is lower in energy than the one on the left. As we have already stated, electrons remain unpaired as long as possible. Therefore, the carbon atom that has the electron configuration Is2 2s2 2p2 has two impaired electrons. In a similar way, the nitrogen atom has three electrons in the 2p orbitals,... 

Next, we need to distribute the remaining electrons to achieve a noble gas electron configuration for each atom. Since four electrons were used to form the two covalent single bonds, fourteen electrons remain to be distributed. By convention, the valence shells for the terminal atoms are filled first. If we follow this convention, we can close the valence shells for both the nitrogen and the chlorine atoms with twelve electrons. 

Each atom in structure 3 has a closed-shell electron configuration and a formal charge of zero. We can complete the octet for the carbon and nitrogen atoms in structure 1 by converting a lone pair of electrons on each nitrogen atom into a covalent bond to the central carbon atom. 

The electron configuration of nitrogen ls22s22p3 shows that there are five valence electrons. Three of them are unpaired in this state so nitrogen can form three bonds, however, hybridization still occurs, with the s and p orbitals mixing to form four sp3 hybrid orbitals. 

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