Electron shell

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In atomic physics, an electron shell, also known as a main energy level, is a group of atomic orbitals with the same value of the principal quantum number n. Electron shells are made up of one or more electron subshells, or sublevels, which have two or more orbitals with the same angular momentum quantum number l. Electron shells make up the electron configuration of an atom. It can be shown that the number of electrons that can reside in a shell is equal to <math>2n^2</math>.

The existence of electron shells was first observed experimentally in Charles Barkla's and Henry Moseley's X-ray absorption studies. Barkla labelled them with the letters K, L, M, etc. (The origin of this terminology was alphabetic. K and L were originally called B and A, but were later renamed to leave room for hypothetical spectral lines that were never discovered.) These letters were later found to correspond to the n-values 1, 2, 3, etc. They are used in the spectroscopic Siegbahn notation.

The name for electron shells originates from the Bohr model, in which groups of electrons were believed to orbit the nucleus at certain distances, so that their orbits formed "shells".

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Subshells

Electron subshells are identified by the letters s, p, d, f, g, h, i, etc., corresponding to the azimuthal quantum numbers (l-values) 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. Each shell can hold up to 2, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22 and 26 electrons respectively. The notation 's', 'p', 'd', and 'f' originate from a now-discredited system of categorizing spectral lines as "sharp", "principal", "diffuse", or "fundamental", based on their observed fine structure. When the first four types of orbitals were described, they were associated with these spectral line types, but there were no other names. The designations 'g', 'h', and so on, were derived by following alphabetical order.

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