Abstract
Vibration is a special kind of motion: the atoms of every molecule are permanently changing their relative positions at every temperature (even at absolute zero) without changing the position of the molecular center of mass. In terms of the molecular geometry these vibrations amount to continuously changing bond lengths and bond angles.
...the atoms march in tune. Ralph W. Emerson [1]
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Notes
- 1.
Were the vibrations strictly harmonic, only fundamental transitions would be observable.
- 2.
*cos is abbreviated by c and sin by s in the matrix.
References
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Hargittai, M., Hargittai, I. (2009). Molecular Vibrations. In: Symmetry through the Eyes of a Chemist. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5628-4_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5628-4_5
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