How many electrons can an orbital of type f hold? I was taking a chemistry test and I encountered the following question:


  How many electrons can an orbital of type f hold?
  
  A. 6
  B. 10
  C. 2
  D. 14
  E. 1


Since there can be [-ℓ, ℓ] orientations and since the orbital type f has ℓ = 3, we should have 7 possible orientations with 2 spins, so ${7 \times 2 = 14}$, so I thought the correct answer was D (14).

However, I got it wrong and the correct answer is marked as C (2). Is it an error in the test, or am I missing something?
You're correct that there are seven possible spatial orientations for an f-type orbital, and hence seven possible orbitals in one f-type sub-shell. However, the question specifically asks for the maximum number of electrons in one such orbital, and any single atomic orbital, regardless of the sub-shell type specified by $l$, can only hold two electrons. This is by virtue of the Pauli exclusion principle. Fourteen would be the maximum number of electrons across an entire f-type sub-shell, but the question only asks about one orbital.