How many electrons in an atom can have the following designations?

Question

Here's the question:

How many electrons in an atom can have the following designations?

5f

5px

7py

4f

6dxy

4d

I don't even know what that question means. I'm guessing it has something to do with the electron orbitals (like 1s2 2s2 2p6 ...) but I'm really not sure. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

If you know what 2p means but you don't know what 6dxy or 4f mean, you need to review your course materials.

Answer 2

5f ... there are seven different 5f orbitals, each one holding a maximum of 2 electrons. Each of these orbitals has a name (like fxy, fxz, fyz, etc. but I'm not sure what all 7 of them are). That's a total of 14 5f electrons.

5px ... there are three kinds of 5p orbitals, named 5px, 5py, and 5pz. Each of them (like ANY orbital) holds two electrons. So the 5px orbital can hold 2 electrons.

7py ... like the 5p orbitals above, there are three types of 7p orbitals, 7px, 7py, and 7pz. The 7py can hold 2 electrons.

4f ... like the first question, there are seven 4f orbitals, each holding 2 electrons. Thus there are 14 7f electrons total.

6dxy ... There are 5 types of 6d orbitals. They are called dxy, dxz, dyz, dx^2-y^2, and dz^2. The dxy orbital, like ANY orbital, can hold 2 electrons.

4d ... There are 5 types of 4d orbitals (just like the 6d's in the above problem). Each of them can hold 2 electrons, so that's a total of 10 4d electrons.