Talk:Allotropes of oxygen

O4 ??? Shouldn't this be removed-- its existence was not confirmed.

An initial spectroscopic study of the epsilon phase of solid O₂ suggested an O₄ unit. Much excitement!! However that is all it ever was - just a suggestion. A later X-Ray study found the epsilon phase consisted of rhomboid structures of 4 linked O₂ molecules. So why is O₄ said to be an allotrope in the article? It should be removed.Axiosaurus (talk) 18:28, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Can we have a specific reference for "A later X-Ray study"? At the moment tetraoxygen is supported by Cacace's 2001 paper, so I see no reason to remove it from the article without a real reference that editors can check. Dirac66 (talk) 17:06, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

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Triplet oxygen

I’ve been looking around the internet (& some other Wikipedia articles) & it would seem that although this article is right in that triplet oxygen is the most common, it is not represented correctly. It says that it is a diradical, which I’m pretty sure is the singlet state. This is my understanding: Singlet is •O-O• Triplet is O=O (the way we usually think of oxygen). Dfcorrea00 (talk) 00:20, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

The triplet state is a diradical though, and so is the singlet state, or at least one of the singlet states. However, the unpaired electrons are not split between the atoms as in the shorthand that you provide. According to the MO diagram, they actually lie in half-filled bonding orbitals, meaning that they are equally shared between the atoms as in O÷O, hence 'dioxidane-μ-diyl' and not dioxidane-1,2-diyl.

In that line of explanation, the lowest energy singlet state is O=O or 'dioxidene', and the second lowest energy singlet state is also O÷O or 'dioxidane-μ-diyl'. The difference between the second singlet state and the triplet state is that while they are both diradicals, the lone electrons are spin paired in the singlet state, but not in the other. Plasmic Physics (talk) 00:58, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

While it may be tempting to combine the two-half bonds of the triplet and second singlet states to raise the net bond-order to two, this is not possible. Since by very definition the result would no longer refer to those states. Plasmic Physics (talk) 01:29, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Plasmic Physics is correct. It may also help to examine the detailed MO diagrams for triplet and singlet dioxygen Singlet oxygen#Electronic structure.

Also, it is not useful to just say "I’ve been looking around the internet (& some other Wikipedia articles)". Please provide specific references, if possible with URL's. Dirac66 (talk) 17:06, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Pentoxolane

Is pentoxolane really the name of an allotrope of oxygen? The pentoxolane page references to ChemSpider, but that site is user generated and pentoxolane (and oxolanes in general) is already the name of a cyclic ether.[1] SpinningSpark 12:35, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, we need a more reliable source such as a scientific paper in a refereed journal. The fact that pentoxolane is the name of a cyclic ether does not absolutely exclude that it also means O₅, since there are examples in the history of chemistry where one name has had two different meanings. But if that is true here, we need reliable sources for both meanings. I will delete from this article both pentoxolane and also "hexoxane" which has no link or source whatsoever. Dirac66 (talk) 00:41, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

The Chemistry of Peroxides, published 2018, says "In principle, ozone can combine with diatomic oxygen to form O₅. While no such data is available for this pentaoxygen..." So it has not been established that the allotrope even exists, let alone been named. I've redirected Pentoxolane for now to Tetrahydrofuran since the ether called pentoxolane is not in doublt. SpinningSpark 08:19, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

I smell

@Ehrenkater: It does not seem probable that Schönbein named O3 as something meaning "I smell". The ety at wikt:ozone sounds much more likely to me. SpinningSpark 11:19, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Happy to change it to the participle. They are both parts of the same verb, and the 1st person singular present indicative active is the usual reference form. However the Greek word cited previously meant "to cry Oh", which was obviously wrong.---Ehrenkater (talk) 11:36, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

The neuter participle surely means "it smells", not "I smell". Also, I don't think a dictionary citation will do for the claim tht this is what Schönbein named it for. The entry in Liddell and Scott mentions neither ozone nor Schönbein. SpinningSpark 12:10, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Also, the meaning given for "ὂζω" in that entry is "smell, whether smell sweet or stink" if I am not mistaken (I don't pretend I understand what the masses of classical references that precede the def are all about). The ref seems to fail verification on all counts. SpinningSpark 12:18, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

It is a present participle active, so it means "smelling", not "it smells". The entry in Liddell and Scott gives the 1st person present indicative active, that is, "I smell", because that is the usual quoted reference form for a verb. The entry also says "To have a smell, whether pleasant or not".---Ehrenkater (talk) 12:58, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

I won't argue with you that that is what it means, but the fact remains that Liddell and Scott do not give "I smell" as a meaning for the headword (or any inflection theereof) so citing them as a reference isn't flying with me, even for that much. Why is it that the meaning they do give applies, according to you, to some inflection of the headword? According to the the Wiktionary entry, ὄζον can also be the neuter nominative singular of ὄζων. That makes it a noun if I am not mistaken, so meaning something other than "smelling" which is a verb. The spelling of the word in the article was wrong, but the original claim that Schönbein named ozone after a Greek word meaning "smell" does seem to be correct, and your edit has made that statement incorrect.

By the way, the Wiktionary entry (for ozone) also says Schönbein spelt it as ozon. That also makes sense for a German speaker; the silent "e" on the end would have to be pronounced in German. SpinningSpark 14:24, 29 June 2020 (UTC)