structural:summarization, information:extraction, information:classification
Atoms: Aufbau principle and Madelung rule

The aufbau principle (from the German Aufbau, "building up, construction") was an important part of Bohr's original concept of electron configuration. It may be stated as:

The principle works very well (for the ground states of the atoms) for the known 118 elements, although it is sometimes slightly wrong. The modern form of the aufbau principle describes an order of orbital energies given by Madelung's rule (or Klechkowski's rule). This rule was first stated by Charles Janet in 1929, rediscovered by Erwin Madelung in 1936, and later given a theoretical justification by V. M. Klechkowski:

This gives the following order for filling the orbitals:

In this list the subshells in parentheses are not occupied in the ground state of the heaviest atom now known (Og, Z = 118).

The aufbau principle can be applied, in a modified form, to the protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus, as in the shell model of nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry.