Electronic Structure of the Atom: (Part 4: Electron Energy States, Periodic Trends)

To understand and predict the bonding in materials it is important to have a good grasp of the electronic structure of the atom. These tutorials explain the connection between electronic wavefunctions and atomic orbitals. They are presented at a level suited to a sophomore student taking an introductory course in materials science and engineering and assume some prior exposure to the basics of the quantized nature of the atom in, for example, a freshman chemistry course.
This last video looks at the energy states of the orbitals and how they are affected by the presence of more than one electron in multi-electron atoms. We examine how the orbital energies change across the periodic table and how those changes are used to understand the periodic trends in atom size, effective nuclear charge, electronegativity and ion size which are critical in predicting the type of bonding exhibited by a material in the solid state.