How To Find Valence Electrons 12 Steps With Pictures

For example, if we were working with a periodic table where the groups aren’t numbered, we would write a 1 above Hydrogen (H), a 2 above Beryllium (Be), and so on until writing an 18 above Helium (He).

For example purposes, let’s find the valence electrons for a very common element: carbon (C). This element has an atomic number of 6. It is located at the top of group 14. In the next step, we’ll find its valence electrons. In this subsection, we’re going to be ignoring the Transitional metals, which are the elements in the rectangle-shaped block made by Groups 3 to 12. These elements are a little different from the rest, so the steps in this subsection won’t work on them. See how to deal with these in the subsection below.

Group 1: 1 valence electron Group 2: 2 valence electrons Group 13: 3 valence electrons Group 14: 4 valence electrons Group 15: 5 valence electrons Group 16: 6 valence electrons Group 17: 7 valence electrons Group 18: 8 valence electrons (except for helium, which has 2) In our example, since carbon is in group 14, we can say that one atom of carbon has four valence electrons.

For example purposes, let’s pick Tantalum (Ta), element 73. In the next few steps, we’ll find its valence electrons (or, at least, try to. ) Note that the transition metals include the lanthanide and actinide series (also called the “rare earth metals”) — the two rows of elements that are usually positioned below the rest of the table that start with lanthanum and actinium. These elements all belong to group 3 of the periodic table.

As electrons are added to an atom, they are sorted into different “orbitals” — basically different areas around the nucleus that the electrons congregate in. Generally, the valence electrons are the electrons in the outermost shell — in other words, the last electrons added. For reasons that are a little too complex to explain here, when electrons are added to the outermost d shell of a transition metal (more on this below), the first electrons that go into the shell tend to act like normal valence electrons, but after that, they don’t, and electrons from other orbital layers sometimes act as valence electrons instead. This means that an atom can have multiple numbers of valence electrons depending on how it is manipulated.

Group 3: 3 valence electrons Group 4: 2 to 4 valence electrons Group 5: 2 to 5 valence electrons Group 6: 2 to 6 valence electrons Group 7: 2 to 7 valence electrons Group 8: 2 or 3 valence electrons Group 9: 2 or 3 valence electrons Group 10: 2 or 3 valence electrons Group 11: 1 or 2 valence electrons Group 12: 2 valence electrons In our example, since Tantalum is in group 5, we can say that it has between two and five valence electrons, depending on the situation.

Let’s look at an example configuration for the element sodium (Na): 1s22s22p63s1 Notice that this electron configuration is just a repeating string that goes like this: (number)(letter)(raised number)(number)(letter)(raised number). . . . . . and so on. The (number)(letter) chunk is the name of the electron orbital and the (raised number) is the number of electrons in that orbital — that’s it! So, for our example, we would say that sodium has 2 electrons in the 1s orbital plus 2 electrons in the 2s orbital plus 6 electrons in the 2p orbital plus 1 electron in the 3s orbital. That’s 11 electrons total — sodium is element number 11, so this makes sense. Keep in mind that each subshell has a certain electron capacity. Their electron capacities are as follows: s: 2 electron capacity p: 6 electron capacity d:10 electron capacity f: 14 electron capacity

Examine complete electron configuration for oganesson (Og), element 118, which is the last element on the periodic table. It has the most electrons of any element, so its electron configuration demonstrates all of the possibilities you could encounter in other elements: 1s22s22p63s23p64s23d104p65s24d105p66s24f145d106p67s25f146d107p6 Now that you have this, all you need to do to find another atom’s electron configuration is just fill in this pattern from the beginning until you run out of electrons. This is easier than it sounds. For example, if we want to make the orbital diagram for chlorine (Cl), element 17, which has 17 electrons, we would do it like this: 1s22s22p63s23p5 Notice that the number of electrons adds up to 17: 2 + 2 + 6 + 2 + 5 = 17. You only need to change the number in the final orbital — the rest is the same since the orbitals before the final one are completely full. For more on electron configurations, see also this article.

For example, let’s say we’re looking at the element Boron (B). Since its atomic number is five, we know it has five electrons and its electron configuration looks like this: 1s22s22p1. Since the first orbital shell has only two electrons, we know that Boron has two shells: one with two 1s electrons and one with three electrons from the 2s and 2p orbitals. As another example, an element like chlorine (1s22s22p63s23p5) will have three orbital shells: one with two 1s electrons, one with two 2s electrons and six 2p electrons, and one with two 3s electrons and five 3p electrons.

For example, if we’re working with Boron, since there are three electrons in the second shell, we can say that Boron has three valence electrons.

For example, we know the element selenium has four orbital shells because it is in the fourth period. Since it is the sixth element from the left in the fourth period (ignoring the transition metals), we know that the outer fourth shell has six electrons, and, thus, that Selenium has six valence electrons.