Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2022 December 12

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December 12

Fluorine (and neon) 2s shell

Resolved

Normally, we talk about fluorine as having 2s and 2p as valence orbitals, for seven valence electrons. However, there's a huge difference in orbital energies between these two, and actually fluorine 2s has a lower energy than the core 5p orbitals in the lanthanides. So, how significant is the contribution of fluorine's 2s shell to chemical bonding? And what about neon? Double sharp (talk) 08:10, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The matter has apparently been discussed on Chemistry Stack Exchange. Some MO diagrams for SF₆ and HF are given to support fluorine 2s as inactive. But that doesn't prove that fluorine 2s is always inactive, only that it is in those compounds. Looking at orbital energies throughout the periodic table, I'd expect it to be more possible in something like BrF+6 and indeed this paper finds some fluorine 2s bonding contribution there.

So I suppose I managed to track down an answer for my original question and the natural follow-up has become "OK, so what are the valence orbitals of neon"? Double sharp (talk) 09:03, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, this distinguishes 2p vs 2s in solid neon as the outer vs inner valence regions. I guess this gives the answer to "what are the valence orbitals of neon" in a natural context when that question is meaningful. Double sharp (talk) 09:51, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

uploading unpublished government technical reports

I would like to know if documents pertaining to a Wikipedia page can be uploaded as pdf files. These are government technical reports which have not been formally released for various reasons. Rdhara (talk) 21:49, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The Help desk is better prepared for this type of question. 136.56.52.157 (talk) 23:51, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the Help Desk is a better place to ask but, I think the short answer is yes, depending on what you mean by "uploaded". If you mean uploading the documents into Wikipedia itself then no, that's not what Wikipedia is for. If you mean putting a link into a reference then absolutely, that is always a good idea. Just remember that the link needs to be in the reference, the link shouldn't BE a reference i.e., a reference link in the article should always stay within the encyclopedia not take you outside of it, but once you go to the reference that can include a link outside of Wikipedia and in fact it is always great if that is possible to do as long as you are linking to something that is legal. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 18:55, 19 December 2022 (UTC)