Bond, chemical electrical nature

Both of the above approaches rely in most cases on classical ideas that picture the atoms and molecules in the system interacting via ordinary electrical and steric forces. These interactions between the species are expressed in terms of force fields, i.e., sets of mathematical equations that describe the attractions and repulsions between the atomic charges, the forces needed to stretch or compress the chemical bonds, repulsions between the atoms due to then-excluded volumes, etc. A variety of different force fields have been developed by different workers to represent the forces present in chemical systems, and although these differ in their details, they generally tend to include the same aspects of the molecular interactions. Some are directed more specifically at the forces important for, say, protein structure, while others focus more on features important in liquids. With time more and more sophisticated force fields are continually being introduced to include additional aspects of the interatomic interactions, e.g., polarizations of the atomic charge clouds and more subtle effects associated with quantum chemical effects. Naturally, inclusion of these additional features requires greater computational effort, so that a compromise between sophistication and practicality is required. 

Fritz London studied the electrical nature of chemical bonding in the 1920s. The weak intermolecular London dispersion forces are named after him. 

The quantum mechanical argument used in deriving the original electronegativity scale involved the amount of ionic character of a normal covalent bond A—B, and it was evident that the amount of ionic character and accordingly the value of the electric dipole moment of the bond would be closely correlated with the difference Ax = xA — xB of the two atoms A and B. In the first edition of The Nature of the Chemical Bond (1939) the following equation was advanced ... 

Methods have been presented, with examples, for obtaining quantitative structure-property relationships for alternating conjugated and cross-conjugated dienes and polyenes, and for adjacent dienes and polyenes. The examples include chemical reactivities, chemical properties and physical properties. A method of estimating electrical effect substituent constants for dienyl and polyenyl substituents has been described. The nature of these substituents has been discussed, but unfortunately the discussion is very largely based on estimated values. A full understanding of structural effects on dienyl and polyenyl systems awaits much further experimental study. It would be particularly useful to have more chemical reactivity studies on their substituent effects, and it would be especially helpful if chemical reactivity studies on the transmission of electrical effects in adjacent multiply doubly bonded systems were available. Only further experimental work will show how valid our estimates and predictions are. 

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