Pauling's Hybrid Atomic Orbitals Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [1]

Gribbin (1988: 127-8):

Casting aside any idea of little hard particles orbiting around the atom, and building from the concept of an electron as some hybrid of particle and wave, Pauling hit on the idea of each of the four symmetric orbitals in the [carbon] atom as a hybrid combination of the four fundamental orbital states.  These orbitals come in two different varieties, which were identified and labelled as s and p on the basis of spectroscopic studies long before anyone had any idea that such things as spread out electrons occupying volumes of space with distinct shapes existed.  Serendipitously, it happens that  that these initials provide a convenient mnemonic for remembering the shapes of the orbitals.  The spherical, or s, orbital had to be mixed in with the three perpendicular, or p, orbitals, to produce four orbitals denoted as sp³.  Just as it is impossible to say whether any electron is 'really' a wave or a particle, so it impossible to say whether a particular bond is 'really' s or p.  It is both, at the same time, in a ratio 1:3. … The symmetric state is, indeed, one with lower overall energy than a state of one pure s and three pure p orbitals.  If you want a physical picture of why this should be so, it is because the four hybrid orbitals keep the four electrons, or electron clouds, at the greatest possible separation from one another.  As you know, like charges repel; the electrons (harking back to the picture of little negatively charged particles) would 'like' to be as far apart from each other as possible, and hybridisation of the available orbital states allows them to achieve this.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, each electron cloud represents the potential locations of an electron, and the shape of the cloud represents the extent of those potential locations.  The 1:3 ratio of s to p atomic orbitals is thus a relation between potentials of the carbon atom as a whole, and this is why the ratio applies to all of the orbitals, making each of them "hybrid".

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the notion of what electrons 'would like' is an interpersonal metaphor of modality in which probability (modalisation) is incongruently represented as inclination (modulation).