Dr. Gutow's Hybrid Atomic Orbital Site
What are Hybrid Orbitals? Interactive 3-D Visualizations: sp hybrids sp2 hybrids sp3 hybrids double bonds (ethylene)
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Visualizing sp3 hybrids
Below you may choose to display the hybrid orbitals sp3i, sp3j, sp3k and sp3m that are created by combining the 2s, 2px, 2py and 2pz orbitals to make the four sp3 hybrids. Use the menus to select up to four different orbitals to display at once, plus control their colors and display mode.
Orbital 1:
Orbital 2:
Orbital 3:
Orbital 4:
  • Viewer Instructions

    You can interact with the image. It is displayed using JSmol.
    Rotate the image Hold down the mouse button and drag the cursor over the image.
    Zoom the view Hold down the shift key and the mouse button while dragging up or down over the image. On a touchpad two finger drag-up zooms in.
    Many more options in the right-click menu The right-click menu can also be activated by clicking on the JSmol icon at the lower right of the viewer.

    Additional instructions for the viewer.
  • How these orbital images are generated

    These orbital images are based on calculations done using the GAMESS1 ab initio quantum mechanics package. These images are generated on the fly by JSmol/Jmol from the GAMESS.log file of a restricted Hartree-Fock (RHF) single point energy calculation on a ground state Ne using the aug-CC-pVDZ basis set. The computations were done on computer resources and using software maintained by chemcompute.org.2 The orbitals are calculated as:3 sp + = 1 2 ⁢ [ 2s ⁡ + 2p x ⁢ ⁡ ] sp - = 1 2 ⁢ [ 2s ⁡ - 2p x ⁢ ⁡ ] ⁡ sp a 2 ⁡ = 1 3 ⁢ [ 2s ⁡ − 2 ⁢ ( 2p x ⁢ ) ⁡ ] sp b 2 ⁡ = 1 6 ⁢ [ 2 ⁢ ( 2s ) ⁡ + 2p x ⁢ ⁡ + 3 ⁢ ( 2p y ⁢ ) ⁡ ] sp c 2 ⁡ = 1 6 ⁢ [ 2 ⁢ ( 2s ) ⁡ + 2p x ⁢ ⁡ - 3 ⁢ ( 2p y ⁢ ) ⁡ ] ⁡ sp i 3 ⁡ = 1 2 ⁢ [ 2s ⁡ + 2p x ⁢ ⁡ + 2p y ⁢ ⁡ + 2p z ⁢ ⁡ ] sp j 3 ⁡ = 1 2 ⁢ [ 2s ⁡ - 2p x ⁢ ⁡ - 2p y ⁢ ⁡ + 2p z ⁢ ⁡ ] sp k 3 ⁡ = 1 2 ⁢ [ 2s ⁡ + 2p x ⁢ ⁡ - 2p y ⁢ ⁡ - 2p z ⁢ ⁡ ] sp m 3 ⁡ = 1 2 ⁢ [ 2s ⁡ - 2p x ⁢ ⁡ + 2p y ⁢ ⁡ - 2p z ⁢ ⁡ ]
  • References

    1. M.W.Schmidt, K.K.Baldridge, J.A.Boatz, S.T.Elbert, M.S.Gordon, J.H.Jensen, S.Koseki, N.Matsunaga, K.A.Nguyen, S.Su, T.L.Windus, M.Dupuis, J.A.Montgomery J. Comput. Chem., 14, 1347-1363(1993).
    2. Perri, M. J. and S. H. Weber (2014). "Web-Based Job Submission Interface for the GAMESS Computational Chemistry Program." Journal of Chemical Education 91(12): 2206-2208. (doi: 10.1021/ed5004228). These resources have been supported by the NSF through grants 2417553 (chemcompute.org) and ACI-1548562 (XSEDE).
    3. LibreTexts Physical Chemistry: Hybrid Orbitals.
Last Update: October 14, 2026
Expires: --
J. Gutow