The Two-Orbital Problem—Summary

The two-orbital problem is extremely important in that many of the bonding situations in chemistry can be distilled into just this form. We have waded through a laborious mathematical derivation. Let us review what we have uncovered thus far. 

The qualitative aspects of the energy associated with orbital interactions are summarized in Table 2.2, which shows that  

In both degenerate and nondegenerate cases, the resultant upper molecular level is destabilized more than the lower molecular level is stabilized. 

Regardless of whether the orbital picture contains two or four electrons, the magnitude of the total interaction energy increases with increasing overlap. 

In a nondegenerate orbital interaction, the magnitude of the interaction energy is inversely proportional to the energy difference between the interacting orbitals. 

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