Do electrons travel on the surface of orbitals or do they dive 'into' them? I never understood this...

Gonna ask here: whats a good book for self reading in inorganic chemistry

>2016
>still using the schrodinger model

I SHIGGY DIGGY DOO

If you look at the probability density you'll find that the probability of finding an electron per volume is the highest at the center of the orbitals.

Those are only plots of the angular components of the orbitals, the full orbitals don't have well defined edges like that.

the orbital is simply a term used to represent the most probable locations of electrons

Maybe you should self read the dictionary

Why such a cunt?

My personal preference is miessler and tarr

...

You can't really represent the full orbitals properly because it has 4 dimensions to it, 3D space and probability density. You either get a graph like in the OP which shows the angular bias of the probability but doesn't show how it fades off with radial distance, or you get a 2D graph which only shows a slice of the orbital but shows the radial behaviour of the probability.

it has something to do with symmetry and group theory

It's most like this. The electron is inside the balllooon, but it's not uniformly distributed within teh Baaloooonnz. It's called an orbital, but it's really nothing like an actual orbit.

Please tell me this is like some creationism propaganda.

lol'd

This is where it is more likely to find an electron. This is a probability distribution.
In theory, an electron in your body can be found on Mars. It's very unlikely but not impossible.

Housecroft and sharpe - inorganic chemistry
Or chemistry of the elements.

You can't learn anything about the momentum from the shape of those orbital representations. Find the actual wavefunction and take the Fourier transform to see it in momentum space. For the sharp orbitals (l=0) you'll find that the momentum is radial only. Equal parts inward motion and outward motion. Hence the spherical symmetry.

Orbitals themselves are misleading. They do not describe the location of electrons, nor do they even describe the motion of them.

They are statistical probabilites of location. It does not imply that they have a particular motion, or location at any particular time. It is actually impossible to ever exactly locate an electron due to the uncertainty principle.

They are the result of pure math, and don't have a legitimate practical reality that one could comprehend.

you can use the orbitals to do real things though

organometallic enzymes and their affects on catalysis are predicted based on orbital calculations

>doesn't know QM
>calls orbitals "misleading"

you're wrong though

That's a dumb thing to say, because what you're looking at (the orbitals) are just the angular components of the wave function anyway. It's missing the radial component, which spreads infinitely far (exp. decay with [math]r[/math], of course). So the border is all of space, it's just that it has surface contours in the shape of the orbitals. If you want to know "where the electron is most likely to exist" (graphically, at least), you're much better off looking at the radial part of the wave function.

Also, quantum mechanics really isn't "an electron (or any particle) moving through a constrained space" at all. The electron isn't some tiny ball that's whizzing around a proton like a planet in orbit. That Bohr picture was thrown out a long time ago.

The surfaces account for both radial and angular contributions; they are surfaces with a constant probability density which contain a significant amount of the wave function.

>They are the result of pure math, and don't have a legitimate practical reality that one could comprehend.
lol
They literally describe where the electron is most likely to be found, to a high degree of accuracy.

>They are the result of pure math, and don't have a legitimate practical reality that one could comprehend.

but

>They are statistical probabilites of location.

Take the wave function of the hydrogen atom, [math]{\Psi _{n\ell m}}\left( {r,\theta ,\varphi } \right) = \sqrt {{{\left( {\frac{{2r}}{{na}}} \right)}^3}\frac{{\left( {n - \ell - 1} \right)!}}{{2n\left( {n + \ell } \right)!}}} {e^{ - r/na}}{\left( {\frac{{2r}}{{na}}} \right)^\ell }L_{n - \ell - 1}^{2\ell + 1}\left( {2r/na} \right)P_\ell ^m\left( {\cos \theta } \right){e^{im\varphi }}[/math] (no i didn't just type this out, had it saved from awhile ago)

The orbitals are plots of [math]{\left| {{\Psi _{n\ell m}}} \right|^2}[/math].

They are completely physical.

It's the squared modulus of the wavefunction of that electron integrated over all space. The "balloon" part that you see is like the first one or two standard deviations of the gaussian probability of there the electron will be found, but in reality, the electron extends across all space.

For comparison, a free electron is described by the function e^(ikr), where k is some constant, and r is a general coordinate.

Also, electrons are not billiard balls, and you should stop thinking about them that way

>integrated over all space.
that would just give 1

Electron's gotta be somewhere

Only semi-related:
QM highlights that an important element of doing science is the ability to make observations of a system without disturbing it.

It is.

the question is whether we have density of a surface or of a volume.

the answer is... a volume.

>>They are completely physical.

undergraduates still have faith in scientific realism.

Awesome post. Please continue.

How should one imagine their movement?

If not physical, then what? Virtual?

youre asking a particle question of a wave, its n/a

>how can an electron in 1D traverse the box if it has a point of 0 probability in the centre

orbital wavefunctions are not moving particles. A wave at rest, if you will

OP, as you know, the measurement of an electron's position is a probabilistic event determined by quantum mechanics.

The most common way to think about the quantum state of an electron is in terms of it's wavefunction, whose square modulus determines the probability density that you'll find an electron at a point in space. To turn that density into a probability, you have to integrate over a volume.

Technically the wavefunction extends to all space, so to visualize it, typically people draw isosurfaces (iso- meaning equal) of probability density. Your balloon drawings are some arbitrary valued isosurface of the prob density, although the electron can be found both inside and outside the surface. Notice that your drawings may obscure the interior structure of the orbitals (although they don't). What these figures are trying to convey are the places of high prob that you'll find a electron.

Notice that your figures emphatically do NOT contain all the information of the quantum state. That's all in the complex valued wavefunction. However for "stationary states", that is, states that don't change in time (eigenvalues of a time-independent hamiltonian if you've taken quantum mechanics), phase isn't important for pure states. If you start adding up combinations of states to create arbitrary excitations, phase then does become important, but this is ignored by intro chem.

Long complicated answer, but hope you found something useful in it.

Ok grampas

I bet you believe the universe is indeterminate too.

Brainlets the both of you

>electron
>travels

That was my highschool chemistry textbook.

Atkins

?
The Schrodinger equation is completely determinant
You just don't understand what the wave function is/represents