One useful way to think of each year of chem/science study is to assume _it's the last year this student will take the subject_. From that perspective, the student will spend the rest of their life with _this_ mental model.<p>When viewed like this a mental model of a nucleus with electrons 'orbiting' around it is entirely valid and literally drops the student in the early 20th century.<p>One of the problems with experts is that they try building a straight line from zero to expert that never needs a backtrack step.<p>Personally I like the opportunity for students to learn about the experimental evidence that _forces them_ to need a better theory than the one they've come in with. Cognitive dissonance is one of the most powerful forces students have for learning - a good teacher should be engineering these moments as part of their lesson design.
These concepts make more sense after one has been exposed to quantum mechanics. One of the first things you do in an intro to quantum mechanics class is calculate the energy levels of a Hydrogen atom (and then Helium.) Chemistry is literally applied quantum mechanics; and everything in quantum mechanics is probabilistic. A more accurate picture of an orbital is that it’s an energy level where a cloud of probability mass lives that corresponds to, if one were to take a photograph of the atom, the likelihood of finding an electron in any given location (wave function collapse.) But before a measurement, the electron really was a cloud of probability mass.
How might one conceive of orbitals with respect to the De Broglie–Bohm theory[+]?<p>[+] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory</a>