Electron Configurations & Orbital Diagrams

Basic Electron Configurations

No electronic configuration problem is exactly "basic", but this video does cover the more "straightforward" ones without any tricks. It covers the basic process for doing electron configuration problems, and gives you the best way to memorize the order that the s-, p-, d- and f-orbitals get filled, which is really half the battle.

Electron Configuration Shortcut Using Periodic Table

Approximately 80% of the students I've tutored prefer to use this method to do electronic configurations of atoms. It's a bit trickier if you think about it, but the key is to not think to hard and instead plug and chug. The main feature of this shortcut is that it saves you from memorizing anything, which is why it works for so many students.

Noble Gas Electron Configuration Notation

Once you've done a few electronic configurations, you start noticing that they can get really long, and that everything except the last orbital or two is always the same. Which brings us to "noble gas notation", which basically lets you skip over the boring stuff (the inner shells) and just write the much shorter configuration of the outer shells.

Ion Electron Configurations

This video just covers a minor variation in electronic configuration problems, which is to do the configuration for ions instead of elements. Hint: they're all noble gas configurations.

Orbital Box Diagrams, Hund's Rule & Pauli Exclusion

Orbital box diagrams are the electron configuration problems where you have to draw each electron out as a little arrow inside a box. Hund's Rule tells you the electrons don't like roommates, and the Pauli Exclusion Principle tells you that if an electron has to have a roommate, it wants one with opposite spin.

Paramagnetic vs Diamagnetic Atoms

Paramagnetism and diamagnetism are just vocab for the final step that you have to do on many electron orbital diagrams, which is basically to go through and say whether all the little arrows have roommates or not.