Suppose you live in a different universe where different amount of quantum numbers is required to describe the atomic orbitals. These quantum numbers have the following rules:

Question

N principal 1,2,3,….
L orbital =N
M magnetic -1. 0. +1
How many orbitals are there all together in the first electron shell?

I know that the number of orbitals in a subshell is 2L + 1, but, Im stuck after that.

Is a subshell the same as the orbitals in the first electron shell? Please explain if possible!

Thanks!

Answer 1

There is nothing in the problem that says the number of orbitals is 2L+1 is there? And since this is in another world I don't know that we can assume that is the number of orbitals. The way I see it is if L = N, then we have L=1 with subshells of -1, 0, and +1 which makes three orbitals, which, by the way, does agree with the 2L+1 idea.