What's the difference between "ortibal" and "orbit"?
Which one should be used in physics?
In quantum mechanics, is "atomic orbital" or "atomic orbit" used?
And what about in classical mechanics? A particle's orbit or orbital?
[Physics] What the difference between “orbital” and “orbit”
classical-mechanicsorbital-motionquantum mechanicsterminology
Best Answer
An orbit is a closed trajectory of a classical dynamical system. Properties of orbits or related to orbits are referred to as orbital properties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_(dynamics)
An orbital is a single-electron wave function for an atom or molecule in the Hartree-Fock approximation. (There are also hybrid orbitals for electron pairs in a chemical bond.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_orbital
Thus a particle has an orbit (and related properties such as orbital speed) if it is treated classically (e.g., a planet). But if treated by quantum mechanics (e.g., an electron), it instead has orbitals.