• Bohr's Hydrogen Atom                                                                             
     
     
     Bohr's Carbon Atom
     
    s orbital 
     
    The s-orbital bears the closest resemblance to a Bohr orbit, in that it is spherical. (The Bohr orbits are circular and confined to a plane.) However, the electrons in an s-orbital may be found anywhere within the orbital, and are statistically most likely to be found at the nucleus.
     
    p orbital
     
    There are three of these, at right angles to each other (corresponding to length, width, and height). Each orbital is dumb-bell shaped, with the electrons able to exist at any point inside the orbital except for the nucleus. Arbitrarily, the py orbital is shown here; the px would be parallel to the bottom of the screen, and the pz would be going behind and coming in front of the screen.

    d orbital
     
    The d-orbitals do not all have the same shape. There are 5 d-orbitals, four of them with similar shapes, and one different. Three of the d-orbitals have the same shape but around different axes (i.e., at right-angles to each other). These orbitals occur between the axes (assuming the axes are those used for the p-orbitals). They are labelled dxy, dyz, and dzx, depending on which pair of axes they incorporate. The dxy orbital is shown below.
     
     

     
Last Modified on April 19, 2017