Timeline for How Should Questions About "Traditional" Chemical Bonding Concepts be Answered?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
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| Jul 25, 2014 at 18:40 | comment | added | Silvio Levy | Also - I come from a math background and find a lot of explanations involving MOs and stuff very unrigorous; sometimes statements that are outright false are widely believed because they're given in textbooks (perhaps with caveats that are easy to forget). My question at chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/14578/… deals with one such example. | |
| Jul 25, 2014 at 18:36 | comment | added | Silvio Levy | I wish I could recommend this answer 100 times. If every answer to a mechanics question started with "Newtonian mechanics is (incorrect/inadequate/obsolete)" we'd never get anywhere. | |
| Jun 12, 2014 at 12:27 | comment | added | bobthechemist | Nice response. I think the concept of "model" is a very important one to bring up, so much so that this Q&A could very well be part of the main site: "Why do historical bonding theories persist in the chemical sciences?" If the purpose of answering questions is to allow the "asker" to develop his/her scientific knowledge, then answering with an historical model (including the limitations of that model, when necessary) is a good way to meet that goal. | |
| Jun 4, 2014 at 20:35 | comment | added | Dissenter | I agree with the gist of the above answers - that there are varying shades of correctness. And above all, scientific truth is independent of what we might think, or draw on a piece of paper, or write in a 200 page dissertation. On the other hand, we can get a lot of mileage from basic models, at least at the undergrad level. It is nice that many people here are obviously way beyond me in understanding chemistry and I appreciate the additional insight these people have to offer, and thanks to them, I am aware of many of the limitations of models. | |
| Jun 3, 2014 at 1:02 | history | answered | thomij | CC BY-SA 3.0 |