VRML Representations of Atomic Orbitals

Visualization of Atomic Orbitals using VRML

Atomic Orbitals

The table below contains links to VRML files depicting the isosurfaces for various atomic orbitals. The surfaces contain 90% of the electron density.

System Requirements

A VRML viewer such as SGI Cosmo Player is required. These pages have been tested and found to display correctly under Netscape Communicator 4.73 with CosmoPlayer 2.1.1 and with Internet Explorer 5.0. Internet Explorer 5.0 is not completely stable when viewing these pages; crashes sometimes occur. Feedback on the performance of these pages with other browsers would be appreciated. The External Authoring Interface (EAI) is employed. If a browser does not support EAI, the VRML image will still appear, but the buttons will not be functional.

Some of the files are relatively large (several hundred KB) and may take a few minutes to download if your internet connection is slow.

Atomic Orbitals

1s
2s						2p_x	2p_y	2p_z
3s						3p_x	3p_y	3p_z
4s	3d_z²	3d_xz	3d_yz	3d_xy	3d_x²-y²	4p_x	4p_y	4p_z
	4d_z²	4d_xz	4d_yz	4d_xy	4d_x²-y²


		4f_5z³-3zr²	4f_5xz²-xr²	4f_5yz²-yr²	4f_x³-3xy²	4f_y³-3yx²	4f_xyz	4f_zx²-zy²

Hybrid Atomic Orbitals

sp	linear	1	2
sp²	trigonal planar	1	2	3
sp³	tetrahedral	1	2	3	4
dsp²	square planar	1	2	3	4
dsp³	trigonal bipyramidal	1 equitorial	2 equitorial	3 equitorial	4 axial	5 axial
d²sp³	octahedral	1	2	3	4	5	6

The sp, sp², and sp³ hybrid orbitals are constructed from the hydrogen 2s and the appropriate 2p orbitals.
The dsp² orbitals are constructed from the hydrogen 3s, 3p_x, 3p_y, and 3d_x2-y² orbitals.
The dsp³ orbitals are constructed from the hydrogen 3s, 3p_x, 3p_y, 3p_z and 3d_z² orbitals.
The d²sp³ orbitals are constructed from the hydrogen 3s, 3p_x, 3p_y, 3p_z, 3d_z², and 3d_x²-y² orbitals.

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