àOlder things: User talk:Brichcja/Archive 1

No worries; thanks for taking the time to explain. Hesperian 05:31, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

— Rod ^talk 06:47, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen this described as a Three-center four-electron bond, but I'm not convinced. Pimentel's work is very old. Is there anything more modern? Do look this up and change it if you're sure that I am wrong.

Regarding the square brackets, they really don't belong here. They are used for transition metal complexes like [Ni(NH₃)₆]²⁺ because otherwise there would be two lots of round brackets. Where there is no ambiguity it's better to leave the brackets out. Check out the autoionisation equation , p816, Greenwood & Earnshaw.

My other objection is that square brackets are used to denote concentration in the context of chemical equilibrium, so again leave them out if they don't really add anything.

P.S. Norman Greenwood was my boss for a time and Alan Earnshaw an old friend and colleague.Petergans 20:14, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Are you really sure about 3c-4e bonding? My doubts are 1) the diagram in the article shows a p orbital on the central atom; surely the H 2p is much too high energy? 2) All that stuff about hypervalent is quite superceded. In those days they were a bit fixated by the octet rule. PX₅ uses 3d which are not as far above 3p in P(V) as in lower oxidation states, and the octet rule does not apply. I only have access to SciFinder if I go in to the University, so it's not easy for me to search for the results of any recent calculations.Petergans 22:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]