Atomic orbitals

Orbits and orbitals sound similar, but they have quite different meanings. It is essential that you understand the difference between them.

The impossibility of drawing orbits for electrons

To plot a path for something you need to know exactly where the object is and be able to work out exactly where it's going to be an instant later. You can't do this for electrons.

Note:  In order to plot a plane's course, it is no use knowing its exact location in mid-Atlantic if you don't know its direction or speed. Equally it's no use knowing that it is travelling at 500 mph due west if you have no idea whether it is near Iceland or the Azores at that particular moment.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (not required at A'level) says - loosely - that you can't know with certainty both where an electron is and where it's going next. That makes it impossible to plot an orbit for an electron around a nucleus. Is this a big problem? No. If something is impossible, you have to accept it and find a way around it.

Hydrogen's electron - the 1s orbital

Note:  In this diagram (and the orbital diagrams that follow), the nucleus is shown very much larger than it really is. This is just for clarity.

Suppose you had a single hydrogen atom and at a particular instant plotted the position of the one electron. Soon afterwards, you do the same thing, and find that it is in a new position. You have no idea how it got from the first place to the second.

You keep on doing this over and over again, and gradually build up a sort of 3D map of the places that the electron is likely to be found.

In the hydrogen case, the electron can be found anywhere within a spherical space surrounding the nucleus. The diagram shows a cross-section through this spherical space.

95% of the time (or any other percentage you choose), the electron will be found within a fairly easily defined region of space quite close to the nucleus. Such a region of space is called anorbital. You can think of an orbital as being the region of space in which the electron lives.