Subject: RE: Orbitals

From: "Shobe, Dave" <dshobe(at)sud-chemieinc.com>
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 09:45:11 -0400

That's an interesting observation.

Structures of main-group (including organic) compounds are often
rationalized in terms of hybridization, which because it relies on orbitals
implies a small role for interelectron repulsion.

However, these same structures are often rationalized using VSEPR theory,
which is 100% based on interelectron repulsion, at least if you ignore the
underlying assumption that electrons, for mysterious reasons, come in pairs.

--David Shobe
Süd-Chemie Inc.
phone (502) 634-7409
fax     (502) 634-7724
email  dshobe(at)sud-chemieinc.com

Don't bother flaming me: I'm behind a firewall.

-----Original Message-----
From: Avijit Ghosh [mailto:avijit(at)physics.drexel.edu]
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 7:01 PM
To: chemistry(at)ccl.net
Subject: CCL:Orbitals

.......

>	(2) Does the single e- wavefunction density have any
> meaning? Let me decompose this a bit. To me the fact that
> organic chemists can "hybridize" orbitals (aka "handwaving
> quantum mechanics") is a testament to the contribution of
> e-e- correlation as actually not being that much at least
> for the first part of the periodic table. In fact that  elements have 
> the properties that they do is also a testament to this.

.......