Is an 8s subshell/orbital possible?

[Zellmer, Robert]

I often get questions about EOC exercise 6.61 (14th & 13th ed.).   This
question asks which are impossible combinations of n and l. Hopefully
you did this problem and understood there is no 1p or 2d.

I'm sending this to ask you about something like an 8s or 6f.  Do they exist?
Of course they do.  Think of things we covered in class (and you'll see it in the
EMS exp).  Hydrogen has 1 electron in the 1s subshell in its ground state.  Are
there other levels, such as the 2nd (n=2), 3rd (n=3),  etc.?  Of course there are.
There's  simply no electrons present in those shells until the 1s electron is
excited there by an input of energy to get an excited state.  Just because there
are no electrons in an 8s or 6g or 10d, etc., subshell in the ground states of
any of the known elements doesn't mean the subshells don't exist. Remember,
there was a time we didn't even know about the elements in the bottom two
rows with electrons in the 4f and 5f.  Does that mean they didn't exist?  Of
course they did, we just hadn't discovered elements with electrons in those
subshells yet.  We don't technically "see" these unoccupied orbitals until we
excite an electron to them.  Then we know they are there and can determine
the energy of this orbital and what type of orbital it is.

I hope this clears up any questions about this.

Dr. Zellmer

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/cbc-chem1210/attachments/20211006/ecf2ceef/attachment-0001.html>