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Two highly respected books: Atkins, Chemical Principles 5th ed. and Clayden Organic Chemistry 2nd ed. don't agree on the orbital arrangement of the $2p$ orbitals of $\ce{N2}$. Clayden on page 94 states that it is $\sigma_{(2p)}, \pi_{(2p)}, \pi^*_{(2p)}, \sigma^*_{(2p)}$ and Atkins on page 118 states that it is $\pi_{(2p)}, \sigma_{(2p)}, \pi^*_{(2p)}, \sigma^*_{(2p)}$.

I am a retired engineer with a consuming interest in how the brain works and am trying to give myself a good grounding in organic chemistry. This may be a trivial issue, but to a novice it hardly seems so. This kind of division within the chemistry community is very concerning.

Any ideas as to what's going on here?

bon
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adlibber
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    Atkins is right. Clayden probably didn't want to go to deep into the matter. Refer to this question: http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/14417/what-is-the-origin-of-the-differences-between-the-mo-schemes-of-o%E2%82%82-and-n%E2%82%82 – EJC Sep 04 '15 at 09:16
  • Thanks for the clarification, Marco. I think you're being a little too generous towards Clayden though. If you're lucky enough to own both books and are studying by yourself such inconsistencies are massively distracting. – adlibber Sep 05 '15 at 09:06

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