The Lennard-Jones potential includes two parts: an attraction proportional to 1/r6, and a repulsion proportional to 1/r12. In computational chemistry, molecular physics, and physical chemistry the Lennard-Jones potential (also termed the LJ potential or 12-6 potential; named for John Lennard-Jones is an intermolecular pair potential. Out of all the intermolecular potentials, the Lennard-Jones potential is probably the one that has been the most extensively studied. It is considered an archetype model for simple yet realistic intermolecular interactions. Lennard-Jones potential functions were initially employed to describe gases and nonpolar condensed matter. But, as quoted above, it is remarkable that a simple Lennard-Jones plus electrostatic model is able to describe crystalline materials. This looks reasonable for ionic solids where directional (covalent) bonds do not exist and hence the interaction energy only depends on the interatomic distances, and this is why these force fields are called pairwise force fields.