hi,

I would like to quote which was given by- Max Planck- "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve".

This sounds ridiculous, right??? Give a thought over it!!! All the understanding of the nature (Includes all the theories and experimental results) till date is nothing but the most closest approximation of "How the nature is".

One can go through the academic syllabus just for getting a job/degree or work out one's own understanding about the nature and be satisfied with it and continue exploring the same. I know this answer does not directly addresses your question, but works out the necessary conditions. Open further for the discussion.

Regards

Amit:

Thanks for your comment.

Mastering this s,p,d,f orbital stuff seems more and more like an empty rite-of-passage. There is certainly no point in teaching it to freshmen chemistry students. This adds no more practical knowledge than knowing the personalities of the "gods of the orbitals".

Dear Brian,

I'm not an expert in chemistry... I can just mention a pair of possible applications in my field (electronics - molecular electronics), hoping that they might be useful.

Very often in molecules the chemical bonds take place in the direction of maximum overlap between single atom orbitals. Thus from the knowledge of valence atomic orbital shapes it is possible to predict the shape of a molecule (useful also for synthesis of new molecules).

Moreover steric effects can be linked to the shape of molecular orbitals. A simple example of steric effect is the repulsive force between orbitals. As a consequence the actual shape of a molecule can be modified (a torsion might appear).

For example the benzene (C6H6) is not planar, but instead it is bended (the so called "chair" configuration) because of that.

This influences chemical-physical properties of the molecule. In particular it affects the transport through it (electrical current) - useful in molecular electronics. Or again chemical reactions can be slowered (steric hindrance) beacuse of that.

Electronic structure of elements can be used for various purposes. For example in knowing the number of valence electrons (the only ones that strongly affect the chemical-physical properties of a material), and thus understaing the nature of chemical bonds. Instead the knowledge about the kind of valence orbitals (and their angular momentum): s,p,d... is useful for understanding chemical and physical properties of a material (eventually compound material or alloys) such as band structure for solids, from which electrical current, interaction with light, mechanical waves (vibrations) etc... can be derived.

Hope it helps,

regards.

@Fabrizio:

Thank you for your considered and thoughtful comments.

I just cannot make any sense of the claim that bonding is due to electron orbitals, or has anything to do with electrons. We need to get THOSE KINDS OF ELECTRONS out of this picture and replace it with something else. Something that makes sense.

My article, "Beyond Einstein: non-local physics" 2nd ed. ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334075961_Beyond_Einstein_non-local_physics_2nd_ed ) gave a very vague implication that atomic bonding might be due to "intrinsic spin". I need to write more on that topic.

Thanks again for your comments.

Brian

To get some idea, the answer of this question can be found from the articles’ links; http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27720.65287/3, https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201701.0028/v16, https://doi.org/10.1021/acsanm.0c02022

To have the better understanding about atomic structure, this is good if you first study the preprint article at link https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-88120/v7