How to Write Noble Gas Electron Configurations (Shorthand Method)

hello everyone and welcome back my name is mr covald and in this video i'm going to show you how to write noble gas

electron configurations but before we get into it please remember to subscribe to my channel

and uh hit the notification bell so you can be notified by other videos i put out uh like my videos if you like them

and put uh comments in the comment section let me know what you think okay let's get into this so

at this point you've learned how to write electron configurations for various

elements i'm not going to go over that if you need a refresher for that please see my videos on writing electron

configurations but here we're going to learn how to do a shorthand notation for electron

configurations and that is using the noble gas configuration as part of your shorthand

and so what i have here are a list of the noble gases

at least the first five and these are the electron configurations for each

of the noble gases up to xenon and so when you're writing your electron

configurations they can get pretty long as you can tell here this one's pretty long and that's certainly not the

longest um but when you're writing your electronic variations you want to you're

probably wondering is there a shorter way do i have to write this out each and every time and there is a shorter way

and i'm going to use these examples as a way to see what that shorthand way is and what you'll notice here is

each of the noble gases as we know are stable they have a full outer shell and so and they also if you're if you're

familiar with the periodic table and how to write out electron configurations from your periodic table with the s

block and the p block and the d and f blocks then this will make more sense if you're

not sure what i'm talking about then please go to my video where i talk about how to use the periodic table in order

to get your electron configurations but here you can see that each noble gas ends with a full

outer shell so 1s2 you have the 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 here you have the 4s2 and the 4p6 so you have this full outer shell

here and then you have the 5s 2 and the 5p6 so this full outer shell here so each

noble gas uh completes the row of your periodic table ends with a full outer shell so that makes sense that we would

use that as uh to help us with our abbreviation so what you'll notice here is that the here's the electron

configuration for boron you'll notice that within boron you have the electron configuration for

helium so in the abbreviated version where you're using what is called the noble gas

electronic configuration all you're doing is you're replacing the electron configuration here

which is what i'm sorry which is what helium's electron configuration is so just

replace it with helium and what we do is we just write it with the noble gas

symbol in square brackets it's got to be square brackets that's just the way that they

uh have traditionally done it and so you put the symbol for the noble gas uh in square brackets and you'll notice

that it's the noble gas prior to the element you're looking at so whatever the first noble gas

you are whatever element you're looking at you're you go back to the first noble gas prior to this element or the element

you're looking at so for boron the element the noble gas that came before boron the first one is helium and you

could see that there and so we would write h e in square brackets and the rest of this would be tacked on to the

end so 2s2 [Music]

2p1 and so that would be the abbreviated noble gas electron configuration for boron

um not a big deal like right they're about the same size but it matters when you get to larger ones so for example

here magnesium you can see here's neon and neons no electron electron configuration is 1s2 2s2 2p6

and you can see it's the same here right so 1s2 2s2 2p6 and then you have this tacked on

so what you do is uh you replace this with the noble gas

uh symbol because this is the same as this so replace that with this so then this becomes

square brackets you have the symbol for neon in the square brackets and then you tack

on the 3s2 so you have 3 s2 and that becomes the uh noble gas configuration for magnesium

all right let's go to arsenic our snake here's a longer one so the shorthand way uh we would go back

to the noble gas that was prior to arsenic and you'll find that that's argon so argon is the first noble gas

prior to arsenic so you would replace um the noble gas there so you'll notice

again here we have the noble gas configuration for argon and that is all contained in here up to 3p6 so you have

3p6 here so this

would then be replaced by the symbol argon so let me write it here so this would be um

a r in square brackets and then you attack on the remaining part so 4 s 2

3 d 10 and then 4 p 3. so

you can see that the abbreviated version is much smaller than the full complete version

and so uh the same thing goes for these so for tin and

barium all you need to do again if you know how to get the

electron configuration from your periodic table using the blocks s block p block d block and f block

all you need to do is go back in your periodic to periodic table to

the first element prior to the element you're looking at so if we look at 10 right so on 10 10 is number

where's 10 ah number 50. so if you're looking at number 50 on the periodic table so where is that right

right over right over here number 50. so what is the uh previous electron

i'm sorry the previous noble gas so if we go back and we go back and we go back the first prior noble gas is krypton so

we're going to write that in square brackets so let's go ahead and write that in square brackets so

it's going to be krypton so we got kr

in square brackets and then using our knowledge of the electron configuration in so far as

it relates to the periodic table we then write whatever comes after the krypton so here we have krypton and so

what what comes after krypton we're in the uh fourth period

so then we're going to go down to the fifth period so if we go over here right

so over here down here we start here so we're in the s block so we're in the fifth period five s

and then we gotta go through the d's that's four d and then we gotta go to

the uh five p so five p two so that's the way you do it so we're going to attack that on to the end so this would

be 5s2 and then 4d10

and then we would have 5p2 and so that would be the noble gas configuration for

tin and then finally is the same for barium what is the previous

noble gas for barium barium is number 56 on the periodic table

so right right there right down here number 56 so the previous noble gas is going to be

uh which one where uh this one right right here so

barium where is it xenon so xenon is the

noble gas that comes right before barium so we're going to put that in square brackets

and then we're going to attack on whatever follows from xenon

so we go ahead and we put xenon in the square brackets and then we tack on whatever comes after

on the periodic table so we go down to cal sorry cesium which is in the sixth

period so we're going to write 6s and that's we're in this s block and so barium is the second element in the s

block so it's going to be 6 s2 so we write 6 s2 after that and that is the

abbreviated version of barium the electron configuration for barium and again these are called the

noble gas electron configurations i hope this was helpful i hope you learned something i hope it was

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