This is my first time learning about orbitals and I am very confused over how do electrons move around the nucleus in the $p$ orbital.
Wouldn't it have to move out of the orbital where probability of finding an electron is low in order to complete its revolution? Maybe my understanding of orbitals is flawed.
Can somebody please help.
While this isn't above criticism, I think that a good starting point to get used to quantum physics is to picture the situation in the following way:
Of course, those are only words so their scientific value is limited, but it's a reasonable starting point until you can rely on more reliable tools (Schrödinger's equation and how to use its solutions).
The electron $p$ orbitals with $\ell,m=1,\pm1$ have nonzero expectation value in a torus around the $z$-axis. As time evolves, the complex phase of the wavefunction increases clockwise or counterclockwise around the $z$-axis, depending on the sign of $m$. Your favorite intro quantum textbook has a paragraph about interpreting this phase evolution as a “probability current.”
The $m=0$ orbital, sometimes called the $p_z$ orbital, corresponds classically to a particle with angular momentum $\ell=1$ projected in some direction onto the $x$-$y$ plane. Because of noncommutivity among angular momentum components, you can’t say which direction in the $x$-$y$ plane. Trying to imagine a classical electron whose motion occupies the $p_z$ orbital is asking for trouble.
Chemists like to use the $p_x$ and $p_y$ orbitals, which are linear combinations of the $\ell,m=1,\pm1$ orbitals so that the wavefunction is real-valued everywhere. These are identical to the $p_z$ orbitals in a rotated coordinate system. If you choose to analyze your wavefunctions in the real-valued basis, you throw away the obvious correspondence with classical angular momentum.
In the limit of large $\ell$, the $|m|=\ell$ states correspond better and better to a particle which is most likely to be found in a ring around the equator. However, the small-$|m|$ states never have a good classical correspondence, because classical physics doesn’t have the same un-interpretability of mutually-perpendicular projections of angular momentum.
As with everyone who comes to quantum mechanics from an everyday world that behaves reasonably, your understanding of how the universe works is wrong. Orbitals is one example of the universe working in a completely different way from what you see in everyday life.
Planets orbit the sun. They are well approximated by point particles that have a definite position and momentum. Electrons are not like this.
The uncertainty principle describes how there is uncertainty in the position and momentum of an electron. Coming from everyday physics, this is commonly understood to mean that you can't measure an electron accurately. This is not right. An electron does not have a precise position or momentum. It does not have a precise trajectory. It has a collection of places it might be and speeds it might have.
This might lead you to think of an electron as like a cloud. A wave function describes how it is spread out over an extended region. A piece of it is at every location, and each piece has a definite momentum. Again, this is not right. The wave function describes the state of the electron. If the electron interacts with something you may be able of infer a position and momentum. You cannot predict the outcome in advance. The wave function allows you to predict probabilities.
Since you are used to a deterministic predictable universe, this would lead you to think that the wave function does not tell you everything you need to know about the electron. There must be hidden variables that would tell you more. If you could measure those hidden variables, you could predict outcomes. Sadly, you would still be wrong. The wave function does completely describe the electron. An electron is inherently unpredictable to a degree.
There are many possible states. All the properties of the electron can be inferred from the state it is in. Even the degree of unpredictability depends on the state. Some states allow you to predict the location reasonably well, but leave the momentum poorly defined. Orbitals are like this. The electron is confined near a nucleus.
In another more spread out state, the electron might be flying across a vacuum chamber towards a screen. There is no way to predict which spot it will hit on the screen, but its momentum is more predictable.
When it arrives at the screen, one spot will light up. The electron interacts with one atom.
All of this is true, but it isn't much help understanding quantum mechanics. The hard part of QM isn't the math. It is the crazy concepts and all the ways that the behavior of the universe seems not just different, but impossible. People have been refining how they think about QM for a century now. The mental pictures are still changing. So as John Custer said, Welcome to quantum mechanics.
On the other hand, as a tool to predict the behavior of the universe, it does very well. It tells you exactly how electrons behave.
The good news is that you can use mental images that are approximately right to sort of understand. And you can refine your understanding as you go. You can get used to how the universe behaves, and it will seem less and less unreasonable. Good luck.
Here are some links that may help you get a feel for quantum mechanics.
The wave-particle duality is perhaps the most obvious conceptual difference from classical physics. This talks about a photon. However, an electron is also something like a particle and something like a wave. How can a red light photon be different from a blue light photon?
This describes how the uncertainty principle changes things. An electron has no definite position or momentum - In a sense it is diffuse, and yet in another it isn't. How a wave function fits in. Does the collapse of the wave function happen immediately everywhere?
This answers your question why an electron doesn't disappear onto the nucleus. Why doesn't an electron ever hit (and stick on) a proton?
