The Debye is a unit of measurement for electric dipole moments, named after physicist Peter Debye. It is not part of the international system of units and is used for diatomic molecules. Molecules with symmetrical or linear arrangements have no dipole moment. The strength of the dipole moment depends on the atoms and their arrangement. The Debye was developed to keep numbers small. Peter Debye was a Dutch physicist known for his research on polar molecules and other discoveries.
The Debye is a unit of measurement named after the physicist Peter Debye. This measurement refers to the electric dipole moment, providing a standard unit of measurement for these dipole moments. The symbol for this unit is D. The numerical measure for a D is 1×10-18 statcoulomb-centimeter. D is not part of the international system of units.
A dipole moment is the overall measure of the charges in a molecule, known as its overall polarity. A molecule will contain negative charges due to electrons and positive charges due to protons. A vector is formed that goes from the negative charge to the positive charge. In particular, the dipole moment refers to the positions or orientations of the charges.
Specifically, the Debye is a measure of a diatomic molecule. The two charges in the diatomic molecule are separated by a distance of one angstrom. The two charges measure 10-10 franklins or statcoulombs.
Diatomic molecules that have the same molecules, such as oxygen gas (O2), hydrogen gas (H2), and chlorine gas (Cl2), have no dipole moment. Molecules with more than two atoms will also have no dipole moment, if the atoms are in a linear arrangement, such as the carbon dioxide (CO2) molecule. Even symmetrical molecules, such as methane (CH4), will not have a dipole moment.
The strength of the dipole moment will depend on the atoms in the molecule and the arrangement or structure of these atoms. Molecules that contain two different atoms, such as hydrochloric acid (HCl), will have a dipole moment. Other molecules with dipole moments are those that have a bent or angular arrangement. Water (H2O) is a good example of a folded structure. The angle formed by the two hydrogen molecules bonded to oxygen is 107.5 degrees.
D is not an SI unit but a centimeter gram second (CGS) unit. When dipole moments are measured using SI units, the resulting numbers are very large. Instead of SI units, this measure was developed to keep the numbers small, which makes calculations less cumbersome.
This unit of measure is named after Peter Debye, born in 1884 and died in 1966. He was a Dutch physicist known for his research on polar molecules. His other discoveries include the Debye model, which estimates how much a phonon contributes to the specific heat of a solid. He also developed the Debye frequency which calculates the maximum vibrational frequency of crystal atoms.
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