My journey of learning chemistry has never been smooth. I’ve rarely had the opportunity to question the fundamentals. The reactions, theories, ’exceptions’ — I’ve had to take them for granted. Why is the maximum electron capacity of an orbit 2n²? Why not 3n³? Why not n!? Why do we get these specific compounds as products in a reaction? Even with a stone weighing on my chest, I memorized them.
The teacher was teaching the Aufbau principle. I noticed the orbital numbers are always odd. I also noticed the sequence of orbital numbers is actually the sequence of the first n odd numbers.
I was almost about to shelve this ’thought’ right there. That’s when a theorem I’d learned in class eight came to mind — the sum of the first n odd numbers equals n². Eureka!
Perhaps this matter is entirely insignificant. But finding the answer to a ‘why’ that had been unsettling my mind for so long is not insignificant. Not at all.
Now it’s time to find out why the number of orbitals per subshell is (2l - 1)!