{"id":115,"date":"2009-09-14T22:00:44","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T05:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.reed.edu\/chem201202\/2009\/09\/internal-rotation-hybrid-orbitals.html"},"modified":"2014-03-18T10:13:05","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:13:05","slug":"internal-rotation-hybrid-orbitals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/2009\/09\/internal-rotation-hybrid-orbitals\/","title":{"rendered":"Internal Rotation &amp; Hybrid Orbitals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/files\/CH3%20sp3%20side%20and%20axial.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"CH3 sp3 side and axial.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/files\/CH3%20sp3%20side%20and%20axial-thumb-380x160.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0pt auto 20px;text-align: center\" height=\"80\" width=\"190\" \/><\/a><\/span><br \/>\nToday&#8217;s lecture on conformational isomers and internal rotation omitted a rather slick use of hybrid orbitals. Pictured above are two views of CH3 (methyl) with its singly occupied <i>sp<\/i>3 hybrid orbital on C (side view on left, orbital axis view on right). Notice the cylindrical symmetry of the orbital about the orbital axis.<\/p>\n<p>Now imagine CH3 were to bond to another CH3 to make ethane, C2H6. Both fragments would overlap their <i>sp<\/i>3 orbitals along their symmetry axes to make a bonding MO occupied by two electrons. Since both hybrid orbitals have cylindrical symmetry, they would overlap (and stabilize the electron pair) in exactly the same way for both a staggered and eclipsed conformer.<\/p>\n<p>This helps explain why conformers are so close in energy. Internal rotation can occur without weakening the bond that the groups rotate around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Today&apos;s lecture on conformational isomers and internal rotation omitted a rather slick use of hybrid orbitals. Pictured above are two views of CH3 (methyl) with its singly occupied sp3 hybrid orbital on C (side view on left, orbital axis&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[60,61,62],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post-lecture","tag-conformer","tag-hybrid-orbital","tag-internal-rotation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5180,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/5180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}