What is the electron configuration for Neon?

To determine the electron configuration for Neon, we need to consider the element's atomic number, which is 10. This means that Neon has 10 electrons to arrange in its electron shells according to the principles of quantum mechanics and the Aufbau principle, which guides the order of filling electron orbitals.

The electron configuration is outlined by filling the energy levels and sublevels in order of increasing energy. For neon, the configuration begins by filling the first shell with 1s, which can hold a maximum of 2 electrons. Thus, the first two electrons occupy the 1s orbital, leading to the notation 1s^2.

Next, we move to the second shell, which consists of the 2s and 2p orbitals. The 2s orbital can hold 2 electrons, and once filled, we proceed to fill the next sublevel, the 2p orbital. The 2p sublevel can hold a total of 6 electrons, but for Neon, only a total of 8 electrons are added in the second shell (2 in 2s and 6 in 2p) since we already accounted for 2 in the 1s orbital.

Thus, the complete electron configuration for Neon is written