Dimolybdenum quintuple bond
File sealed
The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.
Booking photographs
The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 0.1 nm. The red crystal it was measured in was about three hundred thousand times wider.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- Mo2[HC(NAr)2]2. “Compound 3” to friends.
- Bonds
- Five: one sigma, two pi, two delta. Ten electrons.
- Height
- 1.1 nm, standing on its bond.
- Weight
- 1.5 zeptograms
- Oxidation state
- +1 per molybdenum: five d electrons each, all bonding.
- Bond length
- 0.2019 nm, 7 pm shorter than the quadruple bond it came from.
- Record
- Debuted as the shortest metal–metal bond past the first row, bar a twin.
- Last seen
- As red crystals, in a lab in Taiwan.
of them in the red flake of crystal that showed its bond to X-rays, give or take.
You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Dimolybdenum quintuple bond, No. 121 of the exotic forty. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.
Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.
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