Generally, what does a complete valance shell hold?
1 Answer
Mar 29, 2017
Generally, we don't know how many "valance" electrons, unless we know what period we're talking about...
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- Period 1 has access to only the
1s orbital at the moment, e.g. two valence electrons max. - Period 2 has access up to the
2s and2p orbitals at the moment, e.g.2 + 6 = ? valence electrons max. - Period 3 feels free to ignore the so-called "octet rule" when it comes to phosphorus, sulfur, and chlorine. They arbitrarily include the
3d orbitals when they need to, and thus have18 valence electrons max. Otherwise, period 3 has the same max as period 2... - Periods 4 and 5 have the same max as period 2, EXCEPT for the transition metals, which have a max of
18 (why?). - Periods 6 and 7 are stated by the periodic table to include the
f -block, i.e. the max number of valence electrons has increased again to32 (how manyf orbitals are there for a givenn ?).
Thus, the VERY general and NOT AT ALL ABSOLUTE pattern is
