Illustration of sp and sp2 Hybrid Orbitals
Hybrid orbitals are recieved from wave functions of an atom and are denoted as h. They are shown in the following 3D- and contour plots: Left side Ψ, right side |Ψ|2.
For the two orthogonal sp hybrids the linear combinations
are suitable. In the normalized hybrid orbital, the factor of 1/√2 appears. For the three orthogonal sp² hybrids, there are uncountable possibilities that match the criterion h1⊥h2⊥h3. Here, the linear combinations
have been chosen. The all are orthogal to each other and normalization introduces the factor of 1/√3.
sp Hybrids
sp² Hybrids