for the electrons in the open subshell. The orbitals of the subshell are each occupied singly with electrons of parallel spin before double occupation occurs. (This is occasionally called the "bus seat rule" since it is analogous to the behaviour of bus passengers who tend to occupy all double seats singly before double occupation occurs.) Two different physical explanations have been given for the increased stability of high multiplicity states. In the early days of quantum mechanics, it was proposed that electrons in different orbitals are further apart, so that electron–electron repulsion energy is reduced. However, accurate quantum-mechanical calculations (starting in the 1970s) have shown that the reason is that the electrons in singly occupied orbitals are less effectively screened or shielded from the nucleus, so that such orbitals contract and electron–nucleus attraction energy becomes greater in magnitude (or decreases algebraically). Example As an example, consider the ground state of silicon. The electronic configuration of Si is (see spectroscopic notation). We need to consider only the outer 3p2 electrons, for which it can be shown (see term symbols) that the possible terms allowed by the Pauli exclusion principle are 1D , 3P , and 1S. Hund's first rule now states that the ground state term is 3P (triplet P), which has S = 1. The superscript 3 is the value of the multiplicity = 2S + 1 = 3. The diagram shows the state of this term with ML = 1 and MS = 1. Rule 2 This rule deals with reducing the repulsion between electrons. It can be understood from the classical picture that if all electrons are orbiting in the same direction (higher orbital angular momentum) they meet less often than if some of them orbit in opposite directions. In the latter case the repulsive force increases, which separates electrons. This adds potential energy to them, so their energy level is higher. Example For silicon there is only one triplet term, so the second rule is not required. The lightest atom that requires the second rule to determine the ground state term is titanium (Ti, = 22) with electron configuration . In this case the open shell is and the allowed terms include three singlets (1S, 1D, and 1G) and two triplets (3P and 3F). (Here the symbols S, P, D, F, and G indicate that the total orbital angular momentum quantum number has values 0, 1, 2,