High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Triplet oxygen is the ground state of the oxygen molecule. The electron configuration of the molecule has two unpaired electrons occupying two degenerate molecular orbitals. These orbitals are classified as antibonding, so the O-O bond is weaker than the N-N bond in molecular nitrogen, where all bonding molecular orbitals are filled. Unpaired electrons in degenerate orbitals can have the same spin, so the total spin S of the molecule is 1. This is known as a triplet configuration because the spin has three possible alignments in an external magnetic field.