Electron Probability Shell Equations

[Hactar]

OK, so because TB is pretty much the only forum I'm a member of, I'm going to ask a question that is probably much more suited for completely different section of the Internets...
But hey, this is Off Topic

Anyway, here's the deal:
I'm a student and trying to help out my class a bit.
When you consider the location of an electron around the nucleus of an atom, its location can be visualized as a probability cloud.
It is common to draw a surface representing the bits of the cloud in which the electron is in 90% of the time.
These have different shapes for different electrons at different energy levels, tori, spheres, and bubblish type things.

What I need is equations that can be plugged into a 3D grapher program (think Grapher for Mac) and will give the shape of the bubblish things. In other words, I need the equations that will give these shapes in an XYZ coordinate system.

Can anyone help me out?
I'll try to clarify if this post is dreadfully confusing, which I think it is...

Thanks

[fdeck]

Snooping around on the Web, I found this:

gnuplot / spherical_harmonics / index (E)

It uses gnuplot, which has the advantage of being FOSS (free open-source software) that runs on any platform, including Mac. I'm a proponent of using free tools for teaching, as we all know what's happening to the cost of education!

Now this just gives the angular function, which combines with the radial function. But at least it might point you in the right direction.

[Hactar]

Hmm, that looks interesting.
A bit beyond my understanding methinks, but we shall see what we shall see....

Thanks fdeck!

[bassic.science]

Those bubblish things you're talking about are called orbitals. I've seen a program called Mathematica (not free, not by a longshot) model these, but I don't know if a free one exists. But if you do a Google search for electron orbital you'll have better luck than electron bubblish thing.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

What level are you studying at?

There are a lot of examples of how to do this on the net and in textbooks. There are also a few ways to go about it. If you have a stab at it, and tell us where you encounter problems, can give you a hand there.

+1 for using gnuplot, takes a bit of getting used to, but it's a sweet program!

[fdeck]

Originally Posted by bassic.science

Those bubblish things you're talking about are called orbitals. I've seen a program called Mathematica (not free, not by a longshot) model these, but I don't know if a free one exists. But if you do a Google search for electron orbital you'll have better luck than electron bubblish thing.

Mathematica now has a home / hobby version that is quite affordable. If you've ever priced up a full Mathematica license, you'd be shocked.

On the free front, GNU Octave and WxMaxima are free math programs. One is more numerical oriented, and the other is a computer algebra system. Both have excellent graphing facilities, which they achieve by providing an easier-to-use "wrapper" around GnuPlot. Perhaps the best use of GnuPlot is as a graphing core for other programs. If you're into programming or scripting, then SciPy is a scientific extension for the Python programming language that I am making extensive use of these days.

[Hactar]

Originally Posted by i_got_a_mohawk

What level are you studying at?

high school level, and not dreadfully in depth either.
I simply thought that rotatable 3d models would help people visualize orbital shape.
For some reason, it seems like interactive 3d renderings are rather scarce.

Thanks for all the help guys, I'll look at those programs.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

So you aren't needing to calculate them, just trying to view them?

Will have a look and see if I can find something.

You could also try and get extra brownie points by using the Schrodinger equation to calculate the wavefunctions for a hydrogen atom

[Hactar]

Yeah, not so much calculate, just be able to view them in a way that allows me to rotate them in three dimensional space.
Is it possible to just get an equation that can be plugged into a graphing program?