The s orbital, p orbital, d orbital, and f orbital refer to orbitals that have an angular momentum quantum number ℓ = 0, 1, 2, and 3, respectively The letters s, p, d, and f come from the descriptions of alkali metal spectroscopy lines as appearing sharp, principal, diffuse, or fundamentalS, p, d, f and so on are the names given to the orbitals that hold the electrons in atoms These orbitals have different shapes (eg electron density distributions in space) and energies (eg 1s is lower energy than 2s which is lower energy than 3s;Subshells are usually identified by their n and values n is represented by its numerical value, but is represented by a letter as follows 0 is represented by 's', 1 by 'p', 2 by 'd', 3 by 'f', and 4 by 'g' For instance, one may speak of the subshell with n = 2 and as a '2s subshell' The shapes of orbitals Any discussion of the shapes of electron orbitals is necessarily imprecise Parsing Spdf Orbital Hybridizatio...
