system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Will electrons switch places in an orbital? Does this even matter if electrons are identical?

To keep it easy, let’s say you have a helium atom with just two electrons in the orbital. Will they ever swap spins? As in the one that is spin up will “switch” to spin down, while the other switches to spin up? Can you even tell if this happens if electrons are identical?
gpt
>Does this even matter if electrons are identical?

No.

The total state vector for a multi-electron atom consists of a totally antisymmetric combination of all possible permutations of electrons.

So to say that "electron 1 in state 1" and "electron 2 in state 2", "swiched places", doesn't really mean anything.