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Topic: octahedral point group  (Read 5511 times)

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Offline silimay

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octahedral point group
« on: May 16, 2009, 10:10:01 AM »
I am confused about how there are 6 C4 axis in a cube or in an octahedral point group.  I was looking at SH6 specifically.  I can find 3 C4 axes (one for each axis of the molecule) and thus 3 C4^2 axes.  I can find 6 C2 axes.  But on the character table I am missing 3 C4 axes.

Offline frenchy

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Re: octahedral point group
« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2009, 03:21:53 AM »
In SH6, all the "branches" are the same so if you take each one individually and rotate the molecule on the axis of that "branch",you should see that you can turn it 4times by 90 degrees and have the exact same molecule. Using a model for this kind of things usually helps as you get more practice you'll be able to do it in your head.
PhD student in synthetic Inorganic and Supramolecular chemistry.

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