Question

What are energy shells?

Answer 1

• An energy shell, or energy level, may be imagined as an orbit with electrons around the nucleus of an atom.
• The closest shell to the nucleus is called the “K shell” followed by the “L shell” then the “M shell” and so on away from the nucleus.
• The shells can be denoted by alphabets (K, L, M, …)
• Each shell contains a fixed number of electrons –
• The first shell “K shell” contains two electrons,
• The second shell “L shell” contains eight electrons,
• The third shell “M shell” contains 18 electrons and so on.