Question #f86af

1 Answer
Sep 28, 2017

The answer is D. #2#

Explanation:

The subshell in which an electron is located inside an atom is given by the angular momentum quantum number, #l#.

The #3d# subshell, just like any other #d# subshell, is characterized by

# l = 2#

Now, the magnetic quantum number, #m_l#, which tells you the orientation of the orbital that holds the electron, depends on the value of the angular momentum quantum number as given by

#m_l = {-l, -(l-1), ..., -1, 0 ,1, ..., (l-1), l}#

This means that an electron located in the #d# subshell can have

#m_l = {-2, -1, 0, 1, 2}#

You can thus say that the #d# subshell can hold a total of #5# orbitals, each denoted by a specific value of the magnetic quantum number.

As you can see, the only value given to you that is a match here is D. #2#.