The outermost electron shell of an atom is known as the _____________ shell.

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Hello, everyone. Welcome back. And let's look at our next question. The element carbon has six protons and six electrons. How many valence electrons are present on its last orbital? A one B six C five or D four. So as we fill outwards, let's draw the nucleus of our carbon, we know we have six electrons. So the innermost shell will have just two electrons. That's all it can hold. Then the next shell out in level two. So we'll say level one two electrons that little E minus symbolizes electron. When you go up to level two, that shell can hold eight electrons. So we placed two in the first show, we have six total, we have four left. So that means our outermost shell here will have four electrons. So choice D four is our correct answer. And we always want to associate that with carbon um because that's going to affect how it forms bonds with other atoms or with itself in various chemicals that we deal with in microbiology. So we always associate carbon with its four valence electrons allowing it to make four bonds. That can get a little confusing because sometimes we can forget it actually has six electrons total. But the valence electrons are the ones we look at with the purpose of how is it going to interact with other atoms? So the valence electrons present on the last orbital of carbon which has six protons and six electrons are choice D four. See you in the next video.

The outermost electron shell of an atom is known as the _____________ shell.

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Key Concepts

Electron Shells

Valence Electrons

Octet Rule