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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 2004  > January  >
Information, Textbooks, Media, Resources
JCE SymMath: Symbolic Mathematics in Chemistry
Orbital Graphing
Mark Ellison
Wittenberg University, Department of Chemistry, Springfield, OH 45501
Cover
January 2004
Vol. 81 No. 1
p. 158
Full Text
The goal of this document is to help students become familiar with preparing and viewing three-dimensional graphs of the angular parts of hydrogen-like atomic orbitals. The students plot the angular part of an s (l = 0, m = 0) orbital and a pz (l = 1, m = 0) orbital. However, the atomic orbitals p1 (l = 1, m = 1) and p–1 (l = 1, m = –1) are graphed but look nothing like the familiar shape of a p orbital. Linear combinations of these orbitals are graphed, and the combinations result in the familiar px and py orbitals. The process is repeated for some of the d orbitals. In the second part of the document, the students use linear combinations of s and p orbitals to construct hybrid sp, sp2, and sp3 orbitals.

The angular part of an fz3 eigenfunction for a hydrogen-like ion. Screen from Orbital Graphing.
Supplement
Fully interactive computer algebra files are available in the JCE SymMath collection of the JCE Digital Library Only@JCE Online.
*  Contents
*  Download
More Information
*  Citation
 Ellison, Mark. J. Chem. Educ. 2004 81 158.
*  Keywords
 Atomic Properties / Structure; Computational Chemistry; Computer-Based Learning; Numerical Methods; Physical Chemistry; Quantum Chemistry
*  History
 Created:
Last Updated:		 December 8, 2003
February 18, 2005
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