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Atomic orbital pictures, including the elusive f, g, h, i, j, k, and l orbitals (orbitals.com)
14 points by kf on Sept 11, 2007 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments


Note that the orbitals aren't labeled by letter, it's just all the orbitals for quantum numbers <=10.

I have a strong feeling that the higher orbitals require more than 3 spatial dimensions to actually be represented.

Why do most high school and intro college textbooks refrain from printing pictures of the f orbitals? I can understanding not printing the pictures of the orbitals that require an atomic number of 200, but lots of elements use f orbitals. You don't need to actually solve the wave function to look at the orbital pictures.


> I have a strong feeling that the higher orbitals require more than 3 spatial dimensions to actually be represented.

Why's that?


Our current model of the subatomic universe is painfully incomplete. The way that electrons seem to appear and disappear would make a lot more sense if they were moving through extra spatial dimensions, passing information to our higher-dimensional overlords.

What do you think about Heim Theory? http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg18925331.200/ I wish the government would let us use their enormous machine to test it.


Interesting. I didn't know that these effects were observable on the scale of electrons and protons. I thought only string theory postulated these extra dimensions. I'm also totally ignorant when it comes to Physics and I've got no opinion on "Heim Theory", except that it'd be cool if it works. :-)


Some time ago I wrote a program that does this thing in 3D. Screenshots and source is here: http://adomas.org/shg/


We modeled some of these ab initio (starting from the fundamental equations) in our solid state physics class using mathematica. Ah, the good old days :~).




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