Article / Updated 03-26-2016
When calculating the spin of an electron in a hydrogen atom, you need to allow for the spin of the electron, which provides additional quantum states. Given the following equation, where the wave function of the hydrogen atom is a product of radial and angular parts, you can add a spin part, corresponding to the spin of the electron, where s is the spin of the electron and ms is the z component of the spin: The spin part of the equation can take the following values: Hence, now becomes And this wave function can take two different forms, depending on ms, like this: In fact, you can use the spin notation, where For example, for you can write the wave function as And for you can write the wave function as What does this do to the energy degeneracy?