Question

How many electrons occupy P orbitals in a chlorine atom?

Answer 1

`11`

Explanation:

Your tool of choice here will be chlorine's electron configuration.

Chlorine, `"Cl"`, is located in period 3, group 17 of the periodic table, and has an atomic number equal to `17`. This tells you that a neutral chlorine atom will have a total of `17` electrons surrounding its nucleus.

Chlorine's electron configuration looks like this

`"Cl: " 1s^2 2s^2 2p^color(red)(6) 3s^2 3p^color(green)(5)`

Now, notice that the first energy level doesn't not contain a p-subshell, and implicitly any p-orbitals.

The second energy level, on the other hand, contains two subshells, the 2s-subshell, which contains `2` electrons, and the 2p-subshell, which contains three 2p-orbitals and a total of `color(red)(6)` electrons, `2` per orbital.

Finally, the third energy level contains two occupied subshells, the 3s-subshell, which once again contains `2` electrons, and the 3p-subshell, which contains `color(green)(5)` electrons.

Therefore, the number of electrons you get in p-orbitals will be equal to `11`

• 6 electrons in the 2p-subshell
• 5 electrons in the 3p-subshell