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Heavy elements provide many ionic transitions at temperatures where hydrogen and helium have lost their most effective line emitters. Metal-line cooling can therefore increase the plasma cooling function substantially and broaden its temperature features. Low-energy fine-structure transitions also permit cooling below the hydrogen atomic threshold when the relevant ions and electrons are present.

A carbon center bearing one hydrogen and three other single bonds.

A mixture contains two or more chemical substances combined in proportions that need not be fixed. A chemical compound instead has a definite composition: water has two hydrogen chemical atoms per oxygen chemical atom, whereas a sucrose and water mixture can contain different sugar proportions. A homogeneous mixture has uniform composition on the scale of representative samples; a heterogeneous mixture has distinguishable regions of different composition. A chemical solution is homogeneous, whereas sand dispersed in water is a particle suspension.^[ref]

The distinction concerns the sample, not merely its ingredient list. A vessel with dissolved sodium chloride and excess undissolved sodium chloride contains a chemical solution and an ionic crystal thermodynamic phase. The liquid portion can be homogeneous while the whole vessel is heterogeneous. Similarly, molecular oxygen dissolved in water is part of a chemical solution; visible gas bubbles introduce a separate gas thermodynamic phase.

Molar mass turns a weighed sample into a count of specified particles. For a pure chemical substance with specified chemical formula and isotopic abundances, its molar mass iswhere $m$ is the sample mass and $n$ its amount of substance. The SI unit is $\mathrm{kg}\mathrm{mo}{\mathrm{l}}^{-1}$; the common laboratory unit is $\mathrm{g}\mathrm{mo}{\mathrm{l}}^{-1}$, with $1\mathrm{g}\mathrm{mo}{\mathrm{l}}^{-1}=10^{-3}\mathrm{kg}\mathrm{mo}{\mathrm{l}}^{-1}$. Equal values of amount of substance correspond to equal counts of specified entities, but heavier entities give greater masses.

Combining this definition with molecular count and amount of substance givesThe Avogadro constant is exact under the modern definition of the mole. The mass $M/N_{\mathrm{A}}$ is the mean mass per specified entity; if isotopes differ within the sample, individual molecules need not all have that mean mass.^[ref]

Specify what $n$ counts: water molecules, hydrogen chemical atoms, and oxygen chemical atoms give different values of amount of substance for the same sample. For a mixture, dividing total mass by total amount of substance of its chosen entities gives a composition-dependent mean. A polymer sample can contain many chain molar masses; its number-average molar mass and weight-average molar mass answer different averaging questions. Relating either to degree of polymerization also requires a unit-mass convention and end-group accounting.

A molecular formula gives the number of chemical atoms of each chemical element in a molecule. For urea, ${\mathrm{CH}}_4{\mathrm{N}}_2\mathrm{O}$ counts one carbon, four hydrogen, two nitrogen and one oxygen chemical atom. It records composition rather than the arrangement of chemical bonds.

In the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) mass spectrometry convention, a molecular ion is formed by removing or adding one or more electrons to a molecule without fragmentation of its molecular structure.^[ref] For example, removing one electron from intact water gives ${\mathrm{H}}_2{\mathrm{O}}^{\bullet +}$: two hydrogen and one oxygen chemical atom, total electric charge $+e$, and an unpaired electron, hence a radical cation. Atom inventory, net electric charge, and electronic state are separate pieces of information. Hydronium, ${\mathrm{H}}_3{\mathrm{O}}^{+}$, has a different inventory; it is a polyatomic ion, rather than the molecular ion obtained by electron removal from water.

Molecular orbital theory describes the electronic arrangement of a molecule using molecular orbitals: one-electron spatial wavefunctions extending over the combined atomic nuclei. Filling bonding molecular orbitals can stabilize a chemical bond; filling antibonding molecular orbitals opposes that stabilization. A molecular orbital is a building block of a many-electron description, rather than the entire many-electron wavefunction. See Robert W. Field, MIT 5.61, lecture 24, pp. 1–4: molecular orbitals and the LCAO approximation.

First make the interference visible with an exactly normalized one-dimensional toy. Replace the three-dimensional $1s$ atomic orbitals of the hydrogen atom by two Gaussian functions centred at $x=\pm a$, with dimensionless $x$ and $a>0$:The normalized sum and difference are ${\psi }_{\pm }=({\varphi }_A\pm {\varphi }_B)/\sqrt{2(1\pm S)}$, following the same linear combination of atomic orbitals algebra. At $a=1$, the orbital overlap is $S=e^{-1}\approx 0.367879$. At the midpoint, ${\varphi }_A(0)={\varphi }_B(0)\approx 0.455581$, givingBoth probability densities have total integral one: interference redistributes probability, rather than creating an extra electron. These are toy wavefunctions, not actual hydrogen atom orbitals or predictions of molecular hydrogen energies.

Now fill the two $1s$-derived molecular orbitals in the minimal model. The lower bonding molecular orbital is labelled ${\sigma }_g$; the upper antibonding molecular orbital is ${\sigma }_u^{\ast }$. The Pauli exclusion principle permits at most two electrons in each spatial molecular orbital, with opposite spin projections along a chosen axis. For the lowest electron configuration in this model, fill ${\sigma }_g$ first. The subscripts $g$ and $u$ denote even and odd behaviour under inversion through the midpoint; the star marks an antibonding molecular orbital. See Flowers et al., Chemistry 2e, 8.4: occupancy and bond order and Field, MIT 5.61, lecture 25, pp. 1–3: bonding, antibonding, and symmetry labels.

With $N_b$ electrons in bonding molecular orbitals and $N_a$ in antibonding molecular orbitals, the model's bond order is $b=(N_b-N_a)/2$. The three elementary counts are:

The zero bond order says this minimal model gives no net covalent bond for ${\mathrm{He}}_2$. It does not rule out every bound pair of helium chemical atoms: a very weak Van der Waals force can bind a neutral helium dimer, which has been observed experimentally. See Zeller et al., Imaging the He2 quantum halo state using a free electron laser, PNAS 113, 14651–14655 (2016), p. 14651: van der Waals binding and Luo et al., The weakest bond: Experimental observation of helium dimer, Journal of Chemical Physics 98, 3564–3567 (1993). The bond order count does not include that weak binding mechanism.

The useful surprise is that sharing alone does not determine a chemical bond: the relative quantum phase and the occupancy matter together. The same two shapes explain why adding an electron to a bonding molecular orbital increases the model's bond order, while adding one to an antibonding molecular orbital decreases it. Molecular orbital theory also accounts for the unpaired electrons and paramagnetism of molecular oxygen, which its all-paired Lewis structure misses. See Chemistry 2e, 8.4: the molecular orbital description of oxygen.

A molecule, using the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) convention, is an electrically neutral entity containing two or more chemical atoms. Its constituents form a bound unit through chemical bonds; merely drawing a boundary around neighboring particles does not make a molecule. The neutrality requirement concerns total electric charge, not the absence of internal charge separation: water is a polar molecule with zero total electric charge.^[ref]

One water molecule, ${\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}$, contains two hydrogen and one oxygen chemical atom. One molecular oxygen molecule, ${\mathrm{O}}_2$, contains two oxygen chemical atoms; a molecule need not contain different chemical elements. One carbon dioxide molecule, $\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{O}}_2$, contains one carbon and two oxygen chemical atoms. The molecular formula records these inventories, while molecular geometry describes their arrangement. Water and carbon dioxide are chemical compounds; molecular oxygen is a form of one chemical element.

Ordinary crystalline sodium chloride, $\mathrm{NaCl}$, contains an extended arrangement of sodium cations $\mathrm{N}{\mathrm{a}}^{+}$ and chlorine anions $\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{l}}^{-}$. Its formula unit specifies one of each for compositional accounting, without selecting a unique isolated pair. Bulk neutrality therefore does not imply a material consists of neutral molecules. This statement concerns the ionic crystal; the physical state and conditions matter when deciding what particles a chemical formula represents.^[ref]

A polyatomic ion is a charged bound group of chemical atoms, such as hydronium, ${\mathrm{H}}_3{\mathrm{O}}^{+}$. A molecular ion formed by removing an electron from intact water, ${\mathrm{H}}_2{\mathrm{O}}^{\bullet +}$, retains the same atom inventory but has net electric charge $+e$. Neither satisfies the neutral-molecule definition. Distinguishing these entities makes molecular count and amount of substance and mass spectrometry interpretable: say whether the count is of chemical atoms, neutral molecules, ions, or formula units.

The useful surprise is that a molecule can be treated as one particle for motion and counting while retaining internal structure. Its molar mass connects a particle inventory to bulk mass; molecular rotation and molecular vibration reveal internal organization. The continuum approximation uses bulk fields in place of individual molecular positions and motions.

Four water molecules contain eight hydrogen and four oxygen chemical atoms, twelve constituent chemical atoms altogether. Counting the constituents does not mean they have been separated by breaking chemical bonds. The same sample has different counts because the specified entities differ.

For $N$ water molecules, their amount of substance is $n=N/N_{\mathrm{A}}$, while the constituent hydrogen and oxygen inventories correspond to $2n$ and $n$ respectively. The exact Avogadro constant is $N_{\mathrm{A}}=6.02214076\times 10^{23}\mathrm{mo}{\mathrm{l}}^{-1}$. The mole applies to specified entities, including chemical atoms, molecules, and ions.^[ref] Thus four water molecules correspond to approximately $6.6422\times 10^{-24}\mathrm{mol}$ of water, but twice that amount of substance of constituent hydrogen chemical atoms. A macroscopic conversion through measured mass additionally needs the relevant molar mass, as in water mass to molecular count.

A monosaccharide is a single-unit carbohydrate that cannot be split into smaller sugars by hydrolysis. Ribose, deoxyribose, and glucose are examples. The unit is a whole molecule containing many chemical atoms; a disaccharide instead contains two linked monosaccharide units.^[ref]

Classification combines carbon count with open-chain connectivity. An aldose has an aldehyde group; a ketose has a ketone group. Thus glucose is an aldohexose, while fructose is a six-carbon ketose. These names describe the open-chain reference forms even when cyclic forms predominate in water.^[ref]

Check the distinction by counting the groups in the drawings. Open-chain glucose contains one $\mathrm{CHO}$, four $\mathrm{CHOH}$ and one $\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{OH}$ group. Open-chain fructose contains two $\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{OH}$, three $\mathrm{CHOH}$ and one $\mathrm{C}=\mathrm{O}$ group. The respective hydrogen totals are $1+4(2)+3=12$ and $2(3)+3(2)=12$; each structure also has six carbon and six oxygen chemical atoms. Their shared molecular formula ${\mathrm{C}}_6{\mathrm{H}}_{12}{\mathrm{O}}_6$ therefore cannot identify the carbonyl group position or the stereochemistry.

The beauty is that a familiar sugar name can embrace an interconverting family of forms. Monosaccharide ring-chain interconversion connects those drawings to mutarotation, a change visible with polarimetry. Spatial arrangement also matters to biology: an enzyme's active site encounters a particular arrangement of hydroxy groups, rather than merely an inventory of chemical atoms. The existing enzyme and chirality articles explain that recognition principle.

In water, D-glucose mainly occupies cyclic forms. The C5 hydroxy group adds to the C1 aldehyde, forming a cyclic hemiacetal; reversible opening restores the aldehyde. Reclosure can give either anomer. Their changing proportions cause mutarotation, the approach of optical rotation to an equilibrium value. This pathway involves changing chemical bonds, rather than simply rotating a hydroxy group about a single chemical bond.^[ref]

In this conventional Haworth projection, C5's $\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{OH}$ group points up. The alpha anomer's C1 hydroxy group points down, on the opposite face; the beta anomer's points up, on the same face. C2/C3/C4 retain down/up/down hydroxy groups. These are above/below relationships to a reference ring plane, not a claim that the ring is physically flat.^[ref]

The anomeric carbon is C1, the existing carbonyl group carbon that becomes a new stereocenter; no extra carbon chemical atom appears. The two anomers differ at that centre while retaining the other configurations.^[ref]

Trace the ring as C1–C2–C3–C4–C5–O5–C1, where O5 denotes the oxygen originally in the C5 hydroxy group. It contains five carbon chemical atoms and one oxygen; C6 remains attached outside the ring. The C1 carbonyl group oxygen becomes the C1 hydroxy group oxygen. This accounts for every oxygen: O5 in the ring and five hydroxy groups at C1, C2, C3, C4 and C6. Ring closure preserves ${\mathrm{C}}_6{\mathrm{H}}_{12}{\mathrm{O}}_6$. A six-membered ring and a six-carbon sugar are thus different counts.

Mulliken electronegativity uses both the cost of removing an electron and the energy released by accepting an electron. For specified isolated-atom states, the common ground-state convention isThe free electron's energy is the zero reference. Here $I$ is the ionization energy and $A_{\mathrm{ea}}$ is the electron affinity, positive for exothermic attachment. If attachment is instead tabulated as the signed energy change $\Delta E_{\mathrm{attach}}=E(X^{-})-E(X)$, the same expression is $(I-\Delta E_{\mathrm{attach}})/2$. Stating the sign convention prevents adding the wrong quantities. The 1934 original treated suitable valence states, which are not automatically the ground states used in this example.^[ref]

Mulliken electronegativity has energy units before any additional rescaling. With $I$ and $A_{\mathrm{ea}}$ in electronvolts per chemical atom, ${\chi }_{\mathrm{M}}$ is in electronvolts; with both in $\mathrm{kJ}\mathrm{mo}{\mathrm{l}}^{-1}$, it is a molar energy. For hydrogen, the RSC ground-state inputs are $I=1312.05$ and $A_{\mathrm{ea}}=72.769\mathrm{kJ}\mathrm{mo}{\mathrm{l}}^{-1}$, giving ${\chi }_{\mathrm{M}}=692.4095\mathrm{kJ}\mathrm{mo}{\mathrm{l}}^{-1}\approx 7.176\mathrm{eV}$ per chemical atom. For chlorine, $I=1251.186$ and $A_{\mathrm{ea}}=348.575\mathrm{kJ}\mathrm{mo}{\mathrm{l}}^{-1}$ give $799.8805\mathrm{kJ}\mathrm{mo}{\mathrm{l}}^{-1}\approx 8.290\mathrm{eV}$. These are calculated ground-state Mulliken electronegativities, not the RSC's tabulated Pauling electronegativities.^[ref][ref]

Both schemes place chlorine above hydrogen here, but their numerical differences cannot be subtracted from one another or equated. Dividing a molar Mulliken electronegativity by an energy conversion factor changes units; it does not transform it into a Pauling electronegativity. A further empirical mapping would require its own calibration and stated domain.

Let $f_X={\partial }^2\mathcal{N}/(\partial N\partial X)$ count neutral hydrogen absorbers per column density and absorption distance. The summed column per unit proper light-path length is the mean neutral number density. Since $d\ell =cdz/[(1+z)H(z)]$ and $dX/dz=H_0(1+z{)}^2/H(z)$, that density is $(H_0/c)(1+z{)}^3\int N{f}_{X}dN$. Dividing the proper mass density by $(1+z{)}^3$ gives the comoving density in the displayed formula. The denominator is today's critical density; including neutral helium requires a stated mass correction. For a distribution per redshift, replace $H_0{f}_X$ by $H(z)f_z/(1+z{)}^2$.

In neutron detection by proton recoil, a neutron strikes a hydrogen atomic nucleus, namely a proton, and the moving proton produces detectable ionization. Paraffin wax provides many hydrogen targets. There are two distinct questions: how much kinetic energy can a collision transfer, and how often does it occur? Elastic collision kinematics answers the first. It does not determine a collision cross-section or a detector's efficiency.

For the following derivations the target is initially at rest in the laboratory but is free to recoil. Its mass is finite. In particular a proton must not be treated as an immovable target. All massive particles are nonrelativistic particles, their translational kinetic energies are $m{v}^2/2$, and the collision changes no internal state. Target binding and thermal motion are neglected relative to the incident kinetic energy. These assumptions suit an introductory description of fast-neutron elastic collisions; they do not cover every neutron capture or other nuclear reaction.

Neutron moderation reduces the kinetic energy of fast neutrons through repeated collisions in a neutron moderator. In a simple elastic collision model, hydrogen is especially effective because a proton and a neutron have nearly equal masses: the maximum elastic recoil energy fraction can approach one. The mean logarithmic energy decrement describes typical accumulated slowing, whereas the maximum transfer describes a single endpoint.

Slowing, absorption and escape compete. A material can remove neutrons by neutron capture before they become thermal neutrons, and some neutrons escape its boundaries. Describing a neutron moderator therefore requires more than collision kinematics. Near thermal equilibrium, target thermal motion can also give energy back to a neutron; the initially stationary target approximation must then be replaced.

Awarded to Werner Heisenberg for creating quantum mechanics, including its application to forms of hydrogen. The Heisenberg uncertainty relation is one route into the resulting theory.^[ref]

Awarded in equal shares to Willis Eugene Lamb Jr. for discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum and Polykarp Kusch for precision determination of the electron magnetic moment.^[ref]

Awarded to Luis Walter Alvarez for discoveries in elementary particle physics, especially particle resonances identified using hydrogen bubble chambers and analysis of their records.^[ref]

The octet rule is a useful empirical guide: many Lewis structures of chemical compounds containing carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen give each of those chemical atoms eight electrons when nonbonding electrons and all incident bonding electrons are counted. Hydrogen instead normally counts two electrons. These are local counts, not independent budgets: a shared bond pair counts at both endpoints but only once in the molecule's valence electron total.

In water, oxygen counts $4+4=8$ electrons; in ammonia, nitrogen counts $2+6=8$; in $\mathrm{O}=\mathrm{C}=\mathrm{O}$, carbon counts $0+8=8$ and each oxygen counts $4+4=8$. The charge-separated carbon dioxide drawing also satisfies the octet rule, so the octet rule alone cannot select the dominant contributor. Formal charge provides another check.

The octet rule is a heuristic rather than a theorem about every chemical bond. Odd valence electron totals cannot be partitioned entirely into electron pairs, and some valid Lewis structures have fewer or more than eight electrons around a chemical atom. See Chemistry 2e, 7.3: exceptions to the octet rule. The capacity of the $s$ and $p$ electron subshells, $2+6=8$, helps motivate the guide for these chemical elements, but does not prove universal compliance. Lewis discussed a stable outer group of eight, together with a two-electron arrangement for hydrogen, in The Atom and the Molecule (1916), pp. 768 and 774.

For hydrogen approximated as a linear rigid rotor, the $\ell =1$ to $\ell =0$ energy decrease is ${\hslash }^2/I$, with moment of inertia $I\simeq m_p{r}^2/2$. A sample of mass $M$ initially containing an orthohydrogen fraction $x_o$ therefore releases $Q\simeq x_{o}M{\hslash }^2/(m_p^2{r}^2)$ on complete conversion to the lowest parahydrogen level. This estimate neglects the electron contribution to molecular mass and changes of the rotational constant with environment. It describes an internal heat load that external insulation cannot remove.