2,4-Diazadiboretidine 2026-10-20
A 2,4-Diazadiboretidine contains an alternating four-membered B–N–B–N ring. nitrogen lone pairs provide sigma-donor sites, while the ring can bind an electron-rich metal through a pi interaction involving both B and N.
2-Picolylamine 2026-10-20
2-Picolylamine is pyridin-2-ylmethanamine, with a pyridine nitrogen and an aminomethyl nitrogen adjacent on the ring. It binds as an unsymmetrical neutral bidentate ligand, forming a five-membered chelate ring.
Acetonitrile 2026-10-20
Acetonitrile, , can coordinate through nitrogen as a neutral two-electron donor. Bound acetonitrile can be displaced by a stronger donor or an intramolecular chelating group.
Air 2026-10-31
The atmospheric gas mixture, principally nitrogen and oxygen near the Earth's surface, with variable water vapour and smaller amounts of other components. Gas relative density comparisons conventionally specify dry air as the reference.
Alan MacDiarmid Created 2026-10-24 Updated 2026-11-05
Alan MacDiarmid coauthored research on the synthesis and structure of polythiazyl and its precursor. The sulfur-nitrogen polymer provides an example of electronic conduction in a material whose backbone is not a carbon chain.
Its behaviour depends on the extended solid and its electronic states, rather than solely on counting lone pairs in an isolated repeating unit.[ref]
Figure 1.
Portrait of Alan MacDiarmid
. Collection: Science History Institute; photographer not established in this pass. Via Wikimedia Commons; credits and usage information are on the linked source file page. Source.
Albuminoid ammonia Created 2026-10-31 Updated 2026-11-05
The historical operational fraction of Ammonia released by alkaline permanganate after preliminary removal of free Ammonia. It is neither a specific albumen measurement nor necessarily all organic nitrogen.
Allyl isothiocyanate Created 2026-10-31 Updated 2026-11-05
Allyl isothiocyanate has the connectivity . The organic group is attached through nitrogen to the isothiocyanate unit, distinguishing it from an alkyl thiocyanate.
It is a major pungent constituent of black-mustard volatile oil. The structure combines an allyl double bond with a separate nitrogen-carbon-sulfur reactive group, so these sites must be distinguished when discussing a reaction.
ARKIVOC 2008(v), 136–152. nitrogen-bound adducts, unequal ring bonds and variable-temperature NMR in related borazines. The trialkylborazine measurements are analogues, not measurements of the hexamethyl compound.
Amide 2026-10-13
Here an amide means a carbonyl group whose carbon is bonded directly to nitrogen; each of , and may be hydrogen or a group attached through carbon. A peptide bond contains this linkage. Chemical resonance distinguishes its nitrogen from that of an amine. [ref] and [ref]
Amide bond 2026-11-05
An amide bond, in the carboxamide sense used here, is the carbon–nitrogen covalent bond in the unit . The nitrogen is directly attached to the carbonyl group's carbon. Merely finding a carbon–nitrogen bond elsewhere in a molecule does not identify an amide bond. The broader IUPAC class name amide also covers other acid-derived compounds; this article concerns the carbonyl linkage.[ref]
For example, acetamide has connectivity . Its amide C–N bond is the bond from the carbonyl carbon to nitrogen, rather than the adjacent C–C bond. A peptide bond is a biologically important instance of this connectivity in a chain of amino acids.
Chemical resonance describes electron sharing through the nitrogen and carbonyl group. Two useful contributing structures are
These are descriptions contributing to one electronic structure, rather than two molecules rapidly alternating. The amide bond consequently has partial double bond character, and the ordinary amide group favors approximate planarity. Linus Pauling's lecture connects that structural picture to measured bond lengths and explains why hypothetical resonance forms remain useful.[ref]
This supplies a useful modeling constraint: a chain containing peptide bonds cannot be treated as if every backbone single bond rotates equally freely. Approximate amide planarity constrains the conformations available without asserting that every amide is perfectly planar.
Amido ligand 2026-10-20
An amido ligand contains an anionic nitrogen donor, such as . A neutral secondary amine retaining its N–H bond is a different donor type; confusing them changes formal metal oxidation state.
Amine 2026-10-13
A simple neutral amine has nitrogen bonded to one, two, or three groups attached through carbon, with hydrogen filling the remaining positions in the neutral three-bond form. These are the primary, secondary, and tertiary forms respectively. An amide has different connectivity to a carbonyl group. [ref]
Amino acid 2026-10-14
An amino acid combines carboxylic acid and amine functionality in the same molecule; the name alone does not specify their separation. An alpha-amino acid has its amino nitrogen attached to the carbon immediately adjacent to the carboxyl carbon, the amino acid alpha carbon. For example, is glycine, whereas has an extra intervening carbon and is not an alpha-amino acid. These chemical formulas describe connectivity, not the predominant protonation state in water.
Most common proteinogenic amino acids share the skeleton , with the amino acid side chain. In glycine, is hydrogen; in alanine, . Proline is a useful exception to the displayed primary-amine skeleton: its amino nitrogen is part of a ring and has a second carbon substituent. The shared backbone permits assembly into polypeptides, while different amino acid side chains give the resulting proteins diverse chemistry. [ref]
In a chemical solution, protonation changes the electric charges without changing this backbone. Free glycine near neutral pH is predominantly , a zwitterion. Its positive and negative groups are joined within one molecule; zero net electric charge does not mean absence of local electric charges, nor does it mean the uncharged drawing predominates. Glycine protonation explains how lowering or raising pH changes the balance. [ref]
Building a protein joins the carboxyl carbon of one amino acid to the amino nitrogen of another through a peptide bond, an amide linkage. The formal net condensation loses the elements of water; cellular translation uses activated substrates at a ribosome, rather than simply mixing free amino acids in water. Incorporated units are amino acid residues. The interior amide groups no longer have the same acid/base behavior as the two free terminal groups of glycine, so its free-molecule glycine titration cannot be copied independently at every chain position. [ref]
Chirality distinguishes most common proteinogenic amino acids from glycine. The other nineteen members of the conventional twenty have a stereocenter at their amino acid alpha carbon; ordinary translation incorporates their L forms. Glycine's two identical hydrogen substituents make it achiral. Thus being an amino acid, or even an alpha-amino acid, does not by itself imply chirality. [ref]
Amino acid metabolism Created 2026-10-31 Updated 2026-11-05
Amino acid metabolism includes synthesis, interconversion and breakdown of amino acids. Their nitrogen and carbon skeletons can follow different routes: transamination transfers an amino group, while the remaining carbon can enter central metabolism. Excess nitrogen can be converted into an excreted form through processes such as the urea cycle. Availability of one essential amino acid can limit protein synthesis even when other carbon and nitrogen sources are abundant. [ref]
Ammonia Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-11-05
Ammonia is , a pyramidal molecule with a nitrogen lone pair. The lone pair can accept a proton to form ammonium or coordinate a Lewis acid.
In water, the Ammonia-ammonium equilibrium affects pH. Molecular Ammonia and the ammonium ion therefore have different charge states and should not be treated as interchangeable species.[ref]
Ammonia inversion transition Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
In Ammonia, the nitrogen chemical atom can lie on either side of the plane of the three hydrogen chemical atoms. Quantum tunnelling couples these configurations; the resulting pair of energy levels permits an electric dipole transition. This geometrical inversion is distinct from population inversion, which concerns how many molecules occupy each level.[ref]
For an idealized pair of energy levels with equal quantum degeneracy, the Boltzmann distribution gives at positive temperature . A warm source therefore supplies upper-state molecules together with an unwanted lower-state population. Selecting the former can produce population inversion in the transmitted beam without exciting each transmitted molecule during selection. The energy per net downward transition is
Here is the Planck constant. Taking the reported as a rounded input gives . This calculation is a conversion of the reported frequency, not a new measurement of the ammonia inversion transition.
Ammonification Created 2026-10-31 Updated 2026-11-05
Ammonification converts nitrogen in organic compounds to Ammonia or ammonium during their breakdown. For example, microbial degradation of dead organisms can release the nitrogen that had been incorporated in amino acids.
Ammonification differs from nitrogen fixation, which begins with molecular nitrogen, and from nitrification, which oxidizes reduced inorganic nitrogen. Separating these transformations explains how decomposers reconnect living material to the nutrient pools used by primary producers.[ref]
Anilinium ion 2026-10-20
An anilinium ion is an aniline protonated at nitrogen. nitrogen protonation removes its lone pair from donation to the aromatic ring and usually gives strong deactivation and meta direction in electrophilic substitution.
A carbon substituent opposite the activated N–O leaving group migrates onto nitrogen as the N–O bond cleaves. The oxime geometry therefore determines which bond is replaced by a carbon–nitrogen bond.
Consider an original simplified model containing only nitrogen and argon, with argon mole fraction . Let their molar masses be and . Adding the component masses gives the mixture's mean molar mass
For an ideal gas mixture at the same pressure and temperature as a pure-nitrogen reference, the gas density ratio is
The inversion requires known identities, the binary-mixture assumption and . A density ratio cannot uniquely recover an arbitrary multicomponent mixture. Nor should be interpreted as the argon fraction of untreated air: the model sample has only the two specified components.
Choose round model values and . For , the calculated relative density excess is
Thus a one-percent mole fraction does not mean a one-percent gas density change. In a chosen globe at and , the ideal gas law gives approximately for pure nitrogen and for this mixture: only separates the weighings. These are model calculations with rounded molar masses, not historical measurements.
Figure 1.
A small admixture changes gas density, but temperature can imitate the signal
. Calculated binary-mixture model with stipulated molar masses and . The left panel shows the linear gas density contrast. The right compares three hypothetical globe fillings: a reference, one-percent argon at the same temperature, and pure nitrogen cooled enough to give the identical mass. No historical data are plotted. Details.
A direct control calculation explains why the filling conditions matter. At fixed pressure, pure nitrogen at
has the same gas density as that mixture at . A roughly mismatch can therefore imitate the entire stipulated composition signal. For small changes, the ideal gas law gives
An independently measured pressure and temperature, matched weighing procedure, and checks for residual vapour distinguish composition from these alternative causes. The model explains the need for controls; it does not supply the complete corrections for a real gas-weighing instrument.