Electron in an Orbital

Before knowing who was the first to come up with the idea of finding an electron in an orbital and how to find them, one must first understand what orbitals are. An orbital is an energy level into which electrons can arrange themselves. 

Electrons have a negative charge because they tend to occupy the available outer space – those with a more negative charge than positive charge will yield more spaces with a net positive total of that group’s charges and less of the other groups’ charges.

History of orbits

Ancient Greeks figured out that if a magnetic force was made to flow around a circle, one could get two circles of the same size but carrying opposite poles. Thus, one of the answers to the question “who was the first to come up with the idea of finding an electron in an orbital?” can be the Greeks. But that’s not all!

Copenhagen interpretation

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics uses the orbital hypothesis to explain where electrons go when they leave an atom. It explains the emission of photons when such movement occurs. However, this theory can’t explain why electrons occupy particular orbital spaces.

John Bardeen

American physicist John Bardeen had proposed in his theory that an electron could occupy two different orbitals at once –one by itself and another with its corresponding electron overlapping it in yet another orbital.

Electrons are attracted to each other 

Electrons strongly prefer to occupy the same orbital as an identical partner as they are attracted to each other. However, the electrons must have different masses and spins for this to occur.  

Electrons can be at the same and different spots at the same time

The above citations show that electrons can occupy two different orbitals simultaneously, like how two balls can be in the same place but occupy two different spots simultaneously.

Orbitals accommodate more than one electron 

As electrons do not stay in their orbitals but instead jump around between them, therefore orbitals accommodate more than one electron at a time. This conclusion was reached after experiments in a Bose-Einstein condensate, which showed how two particles can simultaneously occupy the same space.

Also, a study published by scientists from Imperial College, London, supports this idea of shared orbitals. According to their theory, they have confirmed that electron orbitals can occupy the same space as one another.

Who was the first to come up with the idea of finding an electron in an orbital?

A few have come up with the concept of electrons occupying orbitals. The idea emerged from the pre-quantum model of atomic structure, where electrons moved in elliptical orbits around the nucleus.

Niels Bohr was the first person to propose a specific location for each electron. He did this using his “atomic theory”. Erwin Schrödinger had modified Max Planck’s quantum theory to form what is now known as quantum mechanics.

Louis de Broglie did the earliest experiments that seriously addressed the idea of electrons occupying orbitals in the early 1920s. These experiments began by examining the wave-particle duality of matter and how electrons’ wavelength was larger than their orbital radius. 

De Broglie’s work involved calculating what would happen if an electron could be placed in a specific energy level and then finding where it would end after travelling through a certain distance.

Later, Paul Dirac came up with the idea in 1928. He was working on developing a relativistic quantum theory of the electron and had created the concept of anti-matter to explain its behaviour. He hypothesised that the electron has a certain probability of being in a specific place rather than being located at one point.

After coming up with the idea of anti-matter, Dirac tried developing a relativistic theory to describe an electron’s behaviour. Instead of having electrons travel in orbits around a nucleus, Dirac proposed that they could exist at different energy levels, which was later proven by experiments conducted in 2013. 

The idea of sharing orbitals came about for two main reasons: 

1) To make two electrons in the same orbital have the same energy. 

2) To help different electrons occupy the same orbital.

Conclusion:

Many came up with the idea of finding an electron in an orbital. From the ancient Greeks to Bohr, from De Broglie to Dirac, everyone had contributed significantly in the research on the movement of electrons and their shifting of space.