What is the electron configuration for Fluorine?

Fluorine has an atomic number of 9, which means it has 9 electrons. The electron configuration describes the distribution of these electrons across various energy levels and orbitals.

To build the electron configuration for Fluorine, we start filling the lowest energy orbitals first, following the Aufbau principle. The first two electrons will fill the 1s orbital, resulting in 1s^2. Next, the following two electrons fill the 2s orbital, leading to 2s^2. After that, we fill the 2p orbital with the remaining five electrons.

For Fluorine, after populating the 1s and 2s orbitals, we have 5 electrons to place in the 2p orbitals. Since there are three 2p orbitals available (2p^3 represents this), we place five electrons in the 2p, confirming that it will result in 2p^5 for Fluorine after accommodating all the electrons.

Thus, the complete electron configuration becomes [He] 2s^2 2p^5. The configuration of [He] indicates that the 1s^2 is already accounted for, meaning Helium’s configuration is a