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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 1996  > June  >
General Interest
Why the 4s Orbital Is Occupied before the 3d
Melvyn P. Melrose
King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK

Eric R. Scerri
Center for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, The London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK

Cover
June 1996
Vol. 73 No. 6
p. 498
Abstract
It is demonstrated that the difference between the total energies of two electronic configurations can be expressed as an orbital energy difference, provided that the configurations differ only in the assignment of one electron and that each of the energies of the differentiating orbitals corresponds to an ionization energy in its own configuration. With orbital energies defined this way, there is nothing paradoxical about 4s being preferred to 3d in the transition series. The vacant 3d orbitals are not available at a lower energy than the occupied 4s.

See Letter re: this article.
More Information
*  Citation
 Melrose Melvyn; Scerri, Eric R. J. Chem. Educ. 1996 73 498.
*  Keywords
*  History
 Created:
Last Updated:		 9/23/1999
5/22/2006
Link to Letter added (May 2004).
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