A More Modern Theory of Organic Bonding

In Section 1.1 we described the basic bonding patterns of organic molecules and the properties of different types of localized bonds. The concepts introduced were mostly fairly classical valence bond concepts. They have definite predictive power, and that is an important measure of the value of any model. However, the picture we are about to present also has the 

---

For many students and professors, this chapter may completely suffice as a review of bonding, because it is sufficient for almost all organic transformations. For other students and professors, however, it may be desirable to now go directly to Chapter 14, where the concepts introduced herein are discussed more quantitatively and modern methods in computational electronic structure theory are covered. This is a decision to be made on an individual basis. However, it should be appreciated that to the best of the authors abilities, we took the topics of this chapter only to a depth that is routinely used when thinking about organic structure and bonding by a non-expert in quantitative methods. Our intention is for Chapter 14 to stand alone, so it can be covered at any point during the course to learn more advanced concepts and quantitative methods. 

---