Polyatomic molecules, ultraviolet-visible

The molecular orbital theory of polyatomic molecules follows the same principles as those outlined for diatomic molecules, but the molecular orbitals spread over all the atoms in the molecule. An electron pair in a bonding orbital helps to bind together the whole molecule, not just an individual pair of atoms. The energies of molecular orbitals in polyatomic molecules can be studied experimentally by using ultraviolet and visible spectroscopy (see Major Technique 2, following this chapter). 

Information about the structure of gas molecules haB been obtained by several methods. Spectroscopic studies in the infrared, visible, and ultraviolet regions have provided much information about the simplest molecules, especially diatomic molecules, and a few polyatomic molecules. Microwave spectroscopy and molecular-beam studies have yielded very accurate interatomic distances and other structural information about many molecules, including some of moderate complexity. Molecular properties determined by spectroscopic methods are given in the two books by G. Herzberg, Spectra of Diatomic Molecules, 1950. and Infrared and Raman Spectra, 1945, Van Nostrand Co., New York. The information obtained about molecules by microwave spectroscopy is summarised by C. H. Townes and A. L. Schawlow in their book Microwave Spectroscopy of Gases, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1955. 

Historically important in the development of modern atomic theory was the recognition that although polyatomic molecules show more or less broad bands of absorption and emission in the visible and ultraviolet regions of the spectrum, the characteristic light absorption or emission by individual atoms occurs at fairly narrow lines of the spectrum, which correspond to sharply defined wavelengths. The line spectrum of each element is so uniquely characteristic of that element that atomic spectroscopy can be used for precise elementary analysis of many types of chemically complex materials. 

---