Overview

What This Lesson Is About

Review of chemical bonding and Molecular Geometry.

What You Will Learn

• We then examine another quantum mechanical treatment of the chemical bond, called the molecular orbital (MO) theory. The MO theory considers the formation of molecular orbitals as a result of the overlap of atomic orbitals, and is able to explain the paramagnetism of the oxygen molecule. (10.6)
• We see that writing molecular orbital configuration is analogous to writing electron configuration for atoms in that both the Pauli exclusion principle and Hund’s rule apply.
• Using homonuclear diatomic molecules as examples, we can learn about the strength of a bond as well as general magnetic properties from the molecular orbital configurations. (10.7)
• The concept of molecular orbital formation is extended to delocalized molecular orbitals, which cover three or more atoms. We see that these delocalized orbitals impart extra stability to molecules like benzene. (10.8)

What to Read

Overby/Chang: Chemistry, 14th Ed. - Chapter 10