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Hi there.
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To answer this question, i'm going to go ahead and write the ground state electron configuration for cobalt.
00:08
So when i look at the periodic table, cobalt is atomic number 27.
00:13
That means an atom of cobalt has 27 protons, but more importantly for this question, it has 27 electrons.
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It's also important to know that cobalt is not an exception to the outfow filling principle.
00:27
Even though some of the transition metals are exceptions, cobalt is not.
00:32
So we are just going to put these 27 electrons into their orbitals in order from lowest energy upward.
00:38
So we have 1s2, 2s2, 2p6 comes after 2s2.
00:46
And the p orbitals, there are three of those.
00:49
We could put two electrons in each one, giving us a total of six.
00:53
So so far, counting up our electrons, we have two, four, 10 electrons in orbitals so far.
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We need to keep going until we get to 27.
01:01
After 2p, we go to the third energy level, and fill in the s.
01:07
And s orbitals, there's only one of them, so it can hold a maximum of two.
01:11
Then we fill in the 3p and it holds six...