Talk:Delta bond

gamma bond

Why does gamma bond redirect here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.6.125.46 (talk) 07:13, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Contested notability and possible merge

In response to the request by The Nth User to provide secondary sources and establish notability, I would point out that (1) this article has seven references to leading inorganic chemistry textbooks and scientific papers, and (2) this article has consulted by an average of 60 readers daily in the past 3 weeks (see Page views accessible from History page), which suggests that there is some interest and does not compare too badly to 337 users daily for Pi bonds which are of course much more important.

So I think it is clear that there is enough interest to keep this material in Wikipedia. However if the objective is merely to reduce the number of articles, perhaps this article could be merged as a separate section into Quadruple bond which has an average 81 readers daily. Similarly Phi bond could be merged into Sextuple bond. Dirac66 (talk) 19:19, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

@Dirac66:@The Nth User: I do not support merger but I feel The Nth User did raise an important point. While s, p, d etc orbital are clearly subsets of orbitals with little notability on their own, sigma, pi, delta etc are not subsets of bonds. By right this concept should be "delta orbital" or "delta symmetry" which would then refer to whether the orbital is within the molecular line/plane or whether it is out of it and has 1, 2 nodes etc. We can then see that it does not just refer to bonds but also lone pairs (such as the sigma vs pi lone pair in water) as well as multicenter molecular orbitals (such as the pi MOs in benzene). I feel the current idea of restricting sigma, pi, delta etc concepts to just bonds is too narrow and makes it look like a subset which was the rationale for contested notability.--Officer781 (talk) 05:21, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I disagree with re-casting this (and the other bond) articles to be about the more general idea of orbital or symmetry. That would conflate them with the atomic orbitals themselves: a p atomic orbital and a pi molecular orbital would be the same except for the small detail of whether they overlap with others. I agree it is true that the symmetry is a major concept, but sources, students, and most scientists seem to treat "atomic" and "molecular/covalent" as distinct topics. For the water example, do references say that a lone-pair of water has pi symmetry, or is a p-like atomic orbital? DMacks (talk) 10:31, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

@DMacks: While I disagree with Weinhold's position on this issue (ie both models are valid), his paper on "Rabbit ears hybrids, VSEPR sterics, and other orbital anachronisms" mentions one lone pair as sigma-type and one lone pair as pi-type and I presume it is labelled as so in natural bond orbital notation. Either way, since the symmetry proposal also has its downsides I presume the best solution is still to keep the articles as they are? I dont feel delta or phi bonds warrant merger. They naturally have lower viewership because transition metals are more obscure.--Officer781 (talk) 03:06, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Chemistry of Materials

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 January 2026 and 2 May 2026. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): CaCourbo (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Chemudesu.

— Assignment last updated by Chemudesu (talk) 18:04, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Hi all, I added a MO diagram of [Re2Cl8]2- as I had hoped to readily show how the bonding and antibonding delta MO's look and how they stack up in energy relative to pi and sigma MO's. The goal here was not to put a spot light on [Re2Cl8]2- but rather to show a generic ordering of sigma, pi and delta bonding and antibonding molecular orbitals. Please let me know if you have any advice to clean up or improve this page (or any additions I have made). I really like the idea of keeping this page on its own, as previously discussed above, and working to get it out of the starting phase.

— Assignment last updated by CaCourbo (talk) 16:36, 5 February 2026 (UTC)