PD_31 t1_j5b0ag0 wrote on January 21, 2023 at 6:12 PM

It can. Carbon can actually form a quadruple bond with itself but the fourth bond is extremely weak because of the way the hybrid orbitals are arranged. Strength of bond depends on orbital overlap and these fourth orbitals are pointing in opposite direction (think the hydrogens in acetylene) so there's little overlap.

So C2 isn't a very stable molecule; it's also not a particularly interesting one since it's literally just two carbons.

Nightnlight1 t1_j5cak0y wrote on January 21, 2023 at 11:28 PM

I know about orbitals and now I wonder why wiki is showing only 2 bounds then?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomic_carbon

I googled this some days ago because of the comet and thought more of an radical, besides the two bonds, even though this doesn't make much sense. Or maybe they're delocalized?

Indemnity4 t1_j5hlrr1 wrote on January 23, 2023 at 1:34 AM

Better image of C2 quadruple bond. The molecular orbitals look impossible to a chemist, but that's more a function of how we represent images.

Nightnlight1 t1_j5ig0xv wrote on January 23, 2023 at 5:37 AM

That's super cool, thank you!