What are some pros and cons for energy level diagrams and electron configuration diagrams?

I was very long for elements like uranium and such but im not sure if those are the types of answers im supposed to be giving. Are there any flaws in the two methods (obvious con)?

3 answers

pros: It gives a physical appearance to build up the configuration for elements and knowing the electron configuration we can predict a number of the chemical and physical properties of the elements. (This would be two obvious pros). There are others.
cons: While a physical appearance of an element makes it easier to explain to beginning students the how and why of chemical reactions, it doesn't address the REAL issues of the construction of an atom. The only way to do that is to treat each element as a mathematical expression. Few of us understand enough math (wave mechanics, the Shroedinger wave equation, etc) to view elements in this light. (I see this as the principal con.)
When you said "While a physical appearance of an element makes it easier to explain to beginning students the how and why of chemical reactions," do you mean there are rules set in place and exceptions but they aren't explained; as students we just accept them as so?
Not exactly. When trying to explain phenomena that we don't understand that well, we resort to all of the old tricks that we know. So in chemistry, we can't see atoms and molecules so we try to explain how they work by making up pictures and using words. I think of electrons as a tiny dot of negative electricity with some of them spinning clockwise and some counterclockwise. But how does an electron look? I haven't seen one. No one has. It can be described as a wave or as a particle. Mathematically, I can't deal with the Hamiltonian operators and the mathematics of quantum mechanics to explain these things mathematically. Even if I could, how would I possibly explain that kind of mathematics to a beginning chemistry student, especially when I didn't understand it myself. So I'm saying that atoms and molecules can be described mathematically but most of us understand pictures and words better than that kind of higher math. Therefore, since no one has seen these things anyway, we do the best we can with words and pictures to help us get the point across. Are the words and pictures wrong? Not really, as long as we recognize that words and pictures are ok until someone photographs one of these suckers to show us what it really looks like.
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