Question

If three electrons are available to fill three empty 2p atomic orbitals, how will the electrons be distributed in the three orbitals?

Answer 1

Think of it this way: say orbitals are boxes and each box can contain 2 electrons.

If there are 3 boxes forming one orbital, it takes 6 electrons to completely fill it. Since there's less than six, each box takes one electron, so there's 1 electron per orbital.

Answer 2

Explanation:

A p-orbital contains three atomic orbitals. Each atomic orbital can hold only two electrons, therefore, in total a p-orbital can hold up to six electrons.

As we are having only three electrons, so firstly each electron will enter each atomic orbital. Hence, there will be one electron per orbital. Later on, 3 more electrons can be filled in the same order.

Thus, we can conclude that the electrons are linearly distributed into the three orbitals.