Polonium Valence Electrons (And How to Find them?)

So you have seen the above image by now, right?

Awesome! You can see that polonium has 6 valence electrons.

But how can you say that Polonium has 6 valence electrons
+
How can you find these valence electrons?

Let’s discuss this in short.

Polonium has 6 valence electrons because there are 6 electrons present in the outermost shell of the Polonium (Po) atom.

Now let’s see how you can easily find the valence electrons of Polonium atom (Po).

You can also refer to this video for finding the valence electrons of any elements.

How to find the Valence Electrons? (2 Methods)

In order to find the valence electrons of a Polonium atom (Po), you can use two methods.

Method 1: From the Periodic Table

To find out the valence electrons of Polonium, you have to see the position of polonium in the periodic table.

More specifically, you have to see the group wise position of polonium element in the periodic table.

From the above image, you can see that the Polonium (Po) is present in the group 16 of periodic table.
(Note: Group 16 is also called group 6A).

So, as the polonium element is present in group 16, it has 6 valence electrons.

In this way, by knowing the position of polonium element in periodic table, you can easily find its valence electrons.

Now let’s see another method for finding the number of valence electrons in polonium.

Method 2: From the Electron Configuration

If you want to find the valence electrons of polonium from its electron configuration, then you should know its electron configuration first.

Now there are many methods to write the electron configurations, but here I will show you the easiest method, i.e by using Aufbau principle.

Aufbau principle: The Aufbau principle simply states that the orbitals with the lower energy are filled first and then the orbitals with higher energy levels are filled.

According to the Aufbau principle, the orbitals are filled in the following order:
1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s, 3d, 4p, 5s, 4d, 5p, 6s, 4f, 5d, 6p, 7s, 5f, 6d, 7p, and so on.

Also the maximum number of electrons that can be accommodated in s, p, d & f orbitals are mentioned in the below table.

Orbitals	Maximum capacity of electrons [1]
s	2
p	6
d	10
f	14

Now let’s try to find the electron configuration of Polonium by using the Aufbau principle.

Electron Configuration of Polonium:

Follow the steps mentioned below to get the electron configuration of polonium.

• To write the electron configuration of polonium, we should first know the total number of electrons present in a polonium atom.
• The polonium atom has a total of 84 electrons because its atomic number is 84 and it is a neutral atom. ^[2]
• Now we have to fill these 84 electrons in the atomic orbitals according to the Aufbau principle.
• According to the Aufbau principle, the electrons will be filled first in 1s orbital, then in 2s orbital, then in 2p orbital, and so on…
• So from the Aufbau principle, we can get the electron configuration of the polonium atom as 1s² 2s² 2p⁶ 3s² 3p⁶ 3d¹⁰ 4s² 4p⁶ 4d¹⁰ 5s² 5p⁶ 4f¹⁴ 5d¹⁰ 6s² 6p⁴. ^[3]

Now in this electron configuration of polonium, we have to see the total number of electrons present in the highest energy level.

You can see in the electron configuration of polonium (1s² 2s² 2p⁶ 3s² 3p⁶ 3d¹⁰ 4s² 4p⁶ 4d¹⁰ 5s² 5p⁶ 4f¹⁴ 5d¹⁰ 6s² 6p⁴) that the highest energy level is 6. And the total number of electrons present in this energy level is 2 + 4 = 6.

So by knowing the electron configuration, we have found that the Polonium has 6 valence electrons.

I hope you have understood the methods of finding the valence electrons in polonium.

See more related topics for your practice;
Astatine Valence Electrons
Radon Valence Electrons
Hydrogen Valence Electrons
Helium Valence Electrons
Lithium Valence Electrons