Cyclooctatetraene energy level diagrams

Of course, this isn t the molecular orbital energy level diagram for real cyclooctatetraene since COT is not planar but tub-shaped. 

Now we can begin to put all the pieces together and make sense of what we know so far. Let us compare the energy level diagrams for benzene and planar cyclooctatetraene. We are not concerned with the actual shapes of the mole-cular orbitals involved, just the energies of them. 

Scheme 2 Schematic energy level diagrams for (a) benzene (1) and (b) planar 1,3,5,7-cyclooctatetraene (COT) (2), showing the angular momentum quantum number (X), symmetry labelling and nodal character of the occupied and empty n molecular orbitals...

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