Concepts and vocabulary

home page This section aims to report questions and answers on the concept and the vocabulary used by theoretical chemists involved in this field. Chemical concepts belonging to bonding theories have often vague definitions and the the words naming them are polysemous. These facts not only hamper the communication but could also lead to misunderstanding. The terminology in Chemistry is regulated by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) which publishes glossaries such the 'Compendium of Chemical Terminology' and the 'Glossary of terms used in theoretical organic chemistry'. Unfortunatly IUPAC has not a division dedicated to theoretical and computational chemistry and therefore a significant part of our vocabulary is missing in the glossaries. Moreover, the existing definitions are not always workable and sometimes they have not received a large enough consensus among the community. As an example, the 'covalent bond' definition as 'A region of relatively high electron density between nuclei which arises at least partly from sharing of electrons and give rise to an attractive force and characteristic internuclear distance', is not very helpful because depending on the model/method concept of electron sharing.