View source for Category:Atomic Structure

This category collects work on the '''structure of the atom''' — how electrons are arranged around the nucleus, why the Periodic Table has the shape it does, and what physical account can be given of atomic spectra and chemical bonding.

The standard treatment is the quantum shell model: orbitals as solutions of the Schrödinger equation, filled according to the Pauli exclusion principle, with shell occupancies following 2n². The alternatives collected here generally begin instead from particles with real geometry and ask what arrangements are physically stable — deriving shell sizes from packing and magnetic constraints rather than from a counting rule over states, and taking seriously the classical objection that orbiting charges must radiate.

Entries include geometric and packing models of the shells, classical and semi-classical accounts of spectra, models of chemical bonding, and reconstructions of the Periodic Table from structural principles. See also [[:Category:Nuclear Structure]], [[:Category:Toroidal Ring]] and [[:Category:Quantum Theory]].

[[Category:Structure]]