Q. What is the maximum number of electrons that can be present in a shell represented by shell number ‘n’?
Answer: 2n2
Notes: An electron shell, or a principal energy level, may be thought of as an orbit followed by electrons around an atom's nucleus. Each shell can contain only a fixed number of electrons: The first shell can hold up to two electrons, the second shell can hold up to eight (2 + 6) electrons, the third shell can hold up to 18 (2 + 6 + 10) and so on. The general formula is that the nth shell can in principle hold up to 2(n2) electrons.