Bond Lengths in Inorganic Solids & Liquids

Abstract The length of a chemical bond is determined by the number of valence electron pairs associated with it. In a simple electrostatic picture, this number is equal to the electrostatic flux linking the bonded atoms. The flux obeys a number of chemically useful theorems, and since it is independent of the ionic or covalent character of the bond, any bond can be transformed to the ionic limit where the flux can be calculated using Coulomb's …