Talk:Nitrogen inversion

Clarify

What is "optically stable" and why is it called that? Does it refer to the polarizing effects on light?

Also, how fast does the interconversion occur?

Finally, how is the "width" of the barrier defined, and in what units? 178.38.41.220 (talk) 18:20, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

178.38.41.220 — the width of the barrier is defined from the (relative) position of the nitrogen’s nucleus wrt ligands, or wrt the overall centre of mass (the difference between those is some dimensionless factor). It has the Length dimension, expressed in such units as nanometres. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:52, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

how can this work - a pyramid has no handed-ness (chirality) AFAICS

If ammonia is a symmetric pyramid then just looking at it upside-down inverts it, so I don't get it. 92.24.35.68 (talk) 18:06, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Do you have difficulty picturing the process? We could make some graphics to illustrate several intermediate structures if you think that would help. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmKFEiWg9XY for an animation. --Ben (talk) 18:16, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the snappy reply. I am not, even remotely, a chemist (work in IT) so I suspect my understanding of what chirality is may be flawed. The video described perfectly what I expected, but <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_%28chemistry%29> says "A chiral molecule/ion is non-superposable on its mirror image". Ok, and if you look at the accompanying image, left-hand and right-hand amino acids, I get it - if you mirror-reflect one of the amino acids you can't wrangle it back to it's non-reflected form by any kind of rotation. Just can't. However if you take the ammonia molecule and its inverted form, you can trivially rotate one back to superimpose on the other perfectly, AFAICS. So it's not chiral per the wiki definition. What am I missing? 92.24.35.68 (talk) 21:12, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

That's a very good point, the introductory paragraph in this article is a little misleading at present. Ammonia is not a chiral molecule so it cannot have its chirality inverted. However, it still undergoes nitrogen inversion. I'll update the article accordingly. --Ben (talk) 08:35, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Good stuff, thanks 92.24.34.179 (talk) 15:11, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Explain the quantum tunneling in ammonia molecule

Can we create a ammonia model using equations Akshay Dhan (talk) 17:10, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Merging to Pyramidal inversion

As the articles are mostly redundant in that they both mostly refer to nitrogen inversion, I suggest merging them into the hierarchically superior Pyramidal inversion article. One might then think about expanding a bit on pyramidal inversions involving other elements (which I would have done myself if I was more confident in my knowledge of Structural Chemistry...) --Jan Lukas Hobrock (talk) 15:26, 20 January 2021 (UTC) dear jan, this may not essentially help the readers. please save your time building upon the existing works. Wiki readers would have a better time finding and reading about the topics they search on the net. Please place a direct link to Nitrogen inversion in the Pyramidal inversion page. many thanks. yours truly — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.105.149.214 (talk) 16:30, 20 January 2021 (UTC)