Question

How many electrons in ground state of rubidium atom (Z=37) will have magnetic quantum number m=0 ?
Answer is ranging from 00 to 99

Answer 1

Dear Student,

Electronic configuration of Rubidium (Z=37) is 1s² 2s² 2p⁶ 3s² 3p⁶ 4s² 3d¹⁰ 4p⁶ 5s¹
Now in each of the s,p,d,f subshells, only one orbital can have m=0 . So the two electrons residing in orbital will have m=0
From the electronic configuration, it can be seen that upto 4p, all orbitals are fully filled
Therefore, total number of electrons having m=0 till 4p are 16 (2 from each subshell)
5s is singly occupied, this means only 1 electron will have m=0
Hence, total number of electrons having magnetic quantum number as m=0 are 16+1=17