Moved to the Netherlands two years ago outside of Western Europe, my name is a dead giveaway that I'm not a local. This summer I decided to spoil myself a little and have a little trip around Europe. In one of the cities where I decided to stay I made a big misktale: I paid for an apartment instead of a hotel.
Now, sure, the prices were the lowest, so should've suspected something. Sure, an owner of a private estate is not entitled to the same standards as everyone else. Sure, a significant part of the blame is on me as I didn't read the entire page carefully enough. But still:
I rented an apartmant at one of French cities for 3 nights for a price of 180 euros, non-refundable ("It's not like I'm cancelling it anyway!", thought u/Shevvv). Having notified the owner that I would arive between 8:00PM and 9:00PM (the train is scheduled to arrive at 8:18PM) I though I was done. Check-in time adjustment rejected: the owner only checks in between 5PM and 6PM. Very drily (and in French) I am advised to re-read the contract. Yes, it turns out that at the bottom of the page (way below the big blue "Book now!" button) there's a line saying "checking between 5PM and 6PM". My bad. Should've looked better. I ask whether an exception can be made with the help of Google.Translate as the owner is definitely inclined to have the conversation in French.
"Today I checked in two students who were both on time between 5PM and 6PM and from the European Union". Whoa. What does THAT have to do with anything? Kindly I offer my apologies for not having read the page from top to bottom and asking whether I can cancel my booking with a refund (made 8 hours ago, a month in advance). The reply is "yes, according to the terms of the contract. Not my problem you can't get here in time" (hint at "I get to keep your 180 euros since it said non-refundable"). Frustrated, I try to find another solution, like spending a night at a hostel maybe and checking in during the sacred 5 to 6 pm timeslot on the next day of my 3 night stay instead, while still paying the full price (since they are not giving a cent back). The reply to me asking to check in on the next day of my 3 night stay is "according to the terms of the contract you are to check in between 5 to 6 PM on %INSERT_DATE%. I don't get why you think you belong to a special group of people when everyone else follows the rules". Another hint at me not being in the same group with "everyone else".
I blow up and write to them in my politest English how I don't appreciate their implication about me not being from EU, their lack of politeness and the expectations that his cheap lodgings would exclusively be booked by EU tourists. Funny enough, the page of their lodging lists two available languages: English and French. Their reply to me having had enough of Google.Translate and ranting purely in English? "You are travelling to France, so speak French". Truly the double standarts in regards to information listed on their page: You do everything I say and I do none of what I have myself listed.
Am I the asshole here? I feel like I'm an easy person to scam when it's being done politely, but this, this was anything but polite. Even worse, I feel like the owner was just looking for an excuse to reject me simply because my name isn't European.
1s-orbital is defined by two quantum numbers: n - this is the average distance of an electron from the nucleus (very oversimplified), and l - this is your shape, basically, a sphere in the case of an s-orbital. Through geometry we know that any circle (and sphere as well) needs only an origin point and a radius to be uniquely defined. In case of an s-orbital the origin point is already chosen for you - it's the nucleus. The n sets the radius, which means those two numbers are enough to uniquely define a sphere. Uniquely = you can't have more than 1. In fact, for every n there's always only one s-orbital, because for each origin point (the nucleus) and radius (the n) there's only one possible sphere.
Now, with a p-orbital it's different. A p-oribtal is like a line with a point along it (the nucleus). Lines can be rotated, that is, they have direction. This gives you an extra degree of freedom. This means that you can have another line going through the same point (the nucleus) but in a different direction. The new line will form an angle with the original line. How much? Well since the line represent orbitals, which are populated by electrons, it's useful to think of them as if they're negatively charged. Two negative charges will obviously repel each other, so the biggest angle possible is what we should go for. Note that it's not 180 degrees, in that case the two lines will end up superimposed on one another. The two lines will be most separated at 90 degrees instead. Can you add another line so that ALL angles between all of the three lines are 90 degrees? Well, since atoms exist in three-dimensional space, let's ask ourselves what it means for space to be three dimensional? It means that there are three primary directions (forward-backward, left-right, up-down) spaced exactly at 90 degrees from one another. So yes, it's totally possible to have 3 lines intersecting each other all at 90 degrees (think of x, y and z coordinates), because space is three-dimensional. Since space is three-dimensional and not four-dimensional, it also becomes apparent why adding a 4-th line at 90 degrees to the previous three is impossible. That's why every level n has 3 p-orbitals (if any), labeled px, py and pz, just like the axes x, y and z of three-dimensional coordinate space.
With more complicated orbitals like d- and f-, shapes become complicated enough that it becomes a bit more difficult to explain how they are all oriented in relation to each other (although it's still possible with d-orbitals). Add to this that from d-orbitals and onwards shapes themselves can be slightly different (has to do with nodes and their orientation), it becomes fairly complicated to predict the number of orbitals based purely on spatial reasoning done in your head. However, if you look at the fact that d-orbitals always come in 5's, and f-orbitals in 7's, a very simple pattern arises: each subshell has 2 extra orbitals for the previous one. s has 1, p has 3, d has 5, f has 7. Any idea how many orbital subshell g has? 9. What about h?
This pattern is often expressed with the use of the quantum number l. I mentioned it earlier but didn't really use it. lt describes the shape of an orbital (without going into to much detail) and is the same thing as calling orbitals s-orbitals or p-orbitals, but using a number instead. So an s-orbital has the l-value of 0, p-robital has the l-value of 1, for a d-orbitals l = 2 and so on. First of all, this way we can clarify that for any given level n, the maximum l is limited at n-1. So for the first level n = 1, lmax = 1 - 1 = 0 (s-orbitals are the most complex ones at level 1). For n = 3, lmax = 3 - 1 = 2 (d-orbitals are the most complex ones at level 3, with s- and p-orbitals also there with their simpler shapes). As we've seen with p-oribtals, they have direction. This can be expressed with ml. The values of ml are integers between -l and +l. So for l = 1 (p-orbitals) ml can have the values of -1, 0 and +1 (three p-orbitals). for l = 0 you can only have ml = 0 (1 s-orbital). And for l = 5 (g-orbitals) you can have ml at -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3, +4, +5, that is, 9 g-orbitals. This is the same conclusion as in the previous paragraph, but this time mathematically expressed with the use of quantum numbers.
Why is there only 1s orbitals?
chemistry