benzene p orbitals-tojc

vogega@plu.edu
Wed, 17 Sep 1997 09:22:22 -0700 (PDT)

at the end of class today Fryhle was talking about the p orbitals in
benzene. he said that the electrons flowed between the p orbitals. does
this happen only when the top and bottom orbitals have the same wave sign?
what happens if one of the electrons gets excited and jumps up into the
antibonding orbital? a node will be formed and the electrons can no
longer flow freely through the ring structure. does this ever happen?

thanks again-
gretchen