What does it tell about an atom and why is it useful?
Please give me a perspective like explaining using examples of cars,buses, rollercoaster etc
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Electron configurations can give us a bit of a clue as to how elements might interact. We can use it to predict what their properties might be and how they might behave, as well as what other elements they might bond with.
To use a rollercoaster as a somewhat clunky example:
The cars on a roller coaster can only fit so many people each, but your cars can’t be arbitrarily small. If you’re full up, but one more person wants to ride, you have to attach an entire other car, and most of the seats in the car will go vacant and unused. Such a roller coaster would really like to be rid of that one person, or at least share them with another roller coaster so it can more efficiently use the space it has.
So, what such a roller coaster might do is find a roller coaster that’s missing one single person in its last car. Then, it can transfer its single person to that car and bind itself to that other roller coaster, and now they’re using the space they have as efficiently as possible.
I like this metaphor – Imagine an atom as being like a stage play or musical. The protons are up on stage performing and the electrons are down in the seats as the audience.
Now, ever atom has two conflicting desires – 1) they want an equal number of electrons in seats as protons on stage. 2) they want every row of seats either completely full or completely empty, they don’t have having partially filled rows of seats.
So those two desires conflict to a degree, if an atom has a row of say 8 seats, but have maybe only 1 person in a seat, or 7 people in seats, they reallly, REALLLY REALLY want to kick out that 1 person, or get 1 more person. Those types of atoms are highly reactive (meaning they react powerfully in chemistry) So those are your hydrogens, sodiums, litthiums (read BOOM!) or your chlorines & flourines (read – stuff that kills all living things quickly)
An atom that has all 8 seats full – those are you heliums, neons, argons, atoms that don’t want to do anything, they are perfectly happy as they are, thank you very much.
If an atom has 4 seats full, well it could go either way. It loves picking up audience members but it doesn’t mind losing them either. Those are the “popular” atoms that you hear a lot about because they do a lot of chemistry, Like your carbon, oxygen, silicon, nitrogen, etc.
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