What is the noble gas shorthand electron configuration of a tungsten atom?
1 Answer
Explanation:
So, you must write the electron configuration for tungsten,
Tungsten is located in period 6, group 6 of the periodic table, and has an atomic number equal to
The first thing to do here is write the complete electron configuration, which will look like this
#"W: " 1s^2 2s^2 2p^6 3s^2 3p^6 3d^10 4s^2 4p^6 4d^10 5s^2 5p^6 4f^14 5d^4 6s^2#
Now, in order to write its noble gas shorthand, you need to first identify the noble gas that comes before tungsten in the periodic table.
In this case, that noble gas is xenon,
#"Xe: " color(blue)(1s^2 2s^2 2p^6 3s^2 3p^6 3d^10 4s^2 4p^6 4d^10 5s^2 5p^6)#
Notice that the two electron configurations are identical for the first
This means that you can replace the first part of tungsten's configuration with that of xenon
#"W: "overbrace(color(blue)(1s^2 2s^2 2p^6 3s^2 3p^6 3d^10 4s^2 4p^6 4d^10 5s^2 5p^6))^(color(red)("xenon's electron configuration")) 4f^14 5d^4 6s^2#
You can write xenon's electron configuration as
#"W: " ["Xe"] 4f^14 5d^4 6s^2#
