Carbon (C) | ![]() |
![]() |
Silicon (Si) | ![]() |
![]() |
Germanium (Ge) | ![]() |
![]() |
Tin (Sn) | ![]() |
![]() |
In all these cases the outermost -shell contains only 2 electrons.
Note: Due to accidental degeneracy the energy depends only
on the principal quantum number in the simplest picture (e.g. the
and
states belonging to the same shell have the same energy).
However, due to effects like LS coupling, this degeneracy
may be lifted and the subshells may have slightly different
energies (which is generally the case).