More than ever before, new techniques show the bond to be a convenient fiction, albeit one that holds the field of chemistry together, finds Philip Ball.
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Ball, P. Beyond the bond. Nature 469, 26–28 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/469026a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/469026a
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Karen Hernandez
Oh I am so confused and surprised, this is one of the proofs that science is always changing, we learn about "bounds" since the high school, and now will be so difficult take out the so rooted idea of the "bound" how always we known.
Elangannan Arunan
Indeed it is important to keep dynamics in mind, when talking about bonds. While a chemical bond is difficult to be defined, we have given a definition for a hydrogen bond through IUPAC recently and it can be viewed at
http://media.iupac.org/repo...
All comments welcome. Even for a hydrogen bond, one can not ignore the dynamics and any definition needs to take this into account. See for example
http://www.rsc.org/Publishi...
PRANAV SHIRHATTI
It is surprising to see that the author seems to have missed mentioning the 'Atoms in molecules' (poineered by Prof. Bader) approach based on electron density and analysis of its spatial distribution. This arguably comes closest to being a quantitative and rigorous description of bonding.
Neal King
Frankly, this article gives some voice to why I have always hated chemistry.
Robert Matthews
Impressive article – so much packed in ! And it makes me feel a bit less worried about never really understanding bonding in school chem lessons.
TM Zanardm
Perhaps definitions in science, like mathematics and poetry, is like water always slithering through our fingers.