Talk:Molecular orbital

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Contents

[edit] From PNA/Physics

  • Molecular orbital Unclear, poorly wikified. I know a lot more about atomic orbitals than molecular ones, so I'm unwilling to do much here. --Smack 03:58, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Also see: orbital hybridisation, atomic_orbital, electron_orbital, and sp2 bond. And as Smack says above, electron configuration. Lot's of conceptual overlap. rmbh 01:31, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)
I think I have done the job for Molecular orbital. I suggest to merge electron orbital with atomic orbital or simply delete it 17:55, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

The start of the page is (still? again?) really awful. I'll try to improve the beginning and Overview to start - the overview surely should be simple and not introduce lots of concepts only needed if you want heavy detail.... The first picture doesn't help much, being mainly of atomic orbitals. Dump it? Ian 09:18, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stub?

9/7/2004 2105 MST

I'd argue that that this is a stub. It has quite a bit of information, plenty for the casual observer, but by the standard of someone who wants to do anything with it, not enough. If I wanted to put together a FMO diagram for LiH (classic problem) I'm not sure I could after reading this page.


A really nice page. However a couple of things aren't transparent, Molecular symmetries]? map [stationary states]? to stationary states, so any collection of degenerate? molecular orbitals must transform according to some representation? of the [symmetry group]?. As a result, basis orbitals that transform according to different representations don't mix. Could you make this a little clearer please, I can't make head nor tail of it. Also On the other hand consider a hypothetical molecule of H3, with the atoms labelled H, H', H". Then we would expect three low energy combinations: 1s + 1s" - 1s' Symmetric 1s - 1s" Antisymmetric 1s + 1s' + 1s" Symmetric Is this correct ? The second combination has onlt 2 basis states and it's not blatenly obvious why the first is symmetric. Theresa Knott

I didn't see anything out of order with a brief skim of the article, though I'll have to look at it at length to be sure (it looks like you've found significant typos, at minimum). It reads like it was ripped out of an undergrad chemistry or physics text, though, and could probably be rewritten to be half the length. --Christopher Thomas 07:17, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Is the LIGHT YEARS comment really correct? Got a tad confused there, can someone just see if that is a typo or something?? Ohm

Yes. It is correct. See Entanglement. Actually I am confused too, even being able to think in functional space. --GS 16:47, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

The discussion on H3 is mostly incorrect. H3 is not C2v symmetry. It is a regular triangle - i.e. D3h. Many people of course discuss linear H3 as the transition structure for H exchange - H + H2 -> H2 + H, but the section here is neither of these things. I suggest someone who has more feel for the overall purpose of this article than I have has a go correcting it, but I might have a go later.Bduke 23:34, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually, H3 does not have a minimum at D3h symmetry. Since there are three electrons, the lowest MO will be doubly-occupied, and at D3h, the remaining electron must be shared over a degenerate MO. This will Jahn-Teller distort away--probably to C2v. User:Ecbrown 20:47, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Handwaving

This term handwaving sounds like American baloney to me. It is imprecise. When I was in school "hand waving" implied that mathematics failed, and the lecturer resorted to emphatic hand gestures to convince you he was right. It seems typical of American science that such a poorly understood colloquial term would end up in an encyclopedia. Whoever wrote that ought to get a job at NASA Frizb 16:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Agree. Done. --Bduke 01:16, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] idea

The article might be a bit easier to read if the first sentence was split into two or three. Too many ideas in one sentence I think.

I think most of it wants to be moved further down. If one takes a many determinant wave function one does not have to use molecular orbitals, so this is misleading as the first sentence. Molecular orbitals are used to produce the best single deteminant function. Even that is over-complex to start off. I'll try to think about it, but I'm really on wikibreak and fly to the other side of the world in a few day. --Bduke 12:13, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the intro is too verbose; I will clean it a bit. --Sadi Carnot 17:23, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sigma and Pi Bond Order incorrect?

I think that the Dinitrogen example in section:MO diagrams is incorrect. Isn't the sigma bond order equal to the total number of electrons in sigma orbitals minus the total number of antibonding electrons in sigma orbitals all over 2?

Someone who knows more than me about this please make the correction.130.102.128.60 01:48, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Spot on. I've fixed it. --Bduke 03:34, 25 July 2007 (UTC)