What is understood by valence electrons?

1 Answer
Oct 24, 2015

Valence or valency is the number of electrons available for making a chemical bond, those elctrons are called valence electrons (in another way, the electrons of the outermost shell of an atom are called the valence electron.

Explanation:

For example, a carbon atom has six electrons, the electron configuration of carbon atom is : #1s^2##2s^2##2p^2#. Which means carbon has 4 electrons in its outermost shell.
So valence of carbon is 4, and these 4 electrons are valence electrons.