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5: Molecular Orbitals

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    60547
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    Molecular orbitals possess specific topology, symmetry, and energy-level patterns.

    • 5.1: Orbital Interaction Topology
      The pattern of molecular orbital energies can often be 'guessed' by using qualitative information about the energies, overlaps, directions, and shapes of the atomic orbitals that comprise the molecular orbitals.
    • 5.2: Orbital Symmetry
      Symmetry provides additional quantum numbers or labels to use in describing the molecular orbitals. Each such quantum number further sub-divides the collection of all molecular orbitals into sets that have vanishing Hamiltonian matrix elements among members belonging to different sets.
    • 5.3: Linear Molecules
      Linear molecules belong to the axial rotation group. Their symmetry is intermediate in complexity between nonlinear molecules and atoms.
    • 5.4: Atoms
      Atoms belong to the full rotation symmetry group; this makes their symmetry analysis the most complex to treat.


    This page titled 5: Molecular Orbitals is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Jack Simons via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

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