Octahedral and Tetrahedral View

It is convenient to picture the superposition of octahedral and tetrahedral complexes on to a cube. Take note that in the octahedral case the 6 ligands will be positioned at the centres of the faces of the cube while for the tetrahedral case the four groups are arranged to occupy the opposing diagonals on top and bottom of the cube.
Octahedral Tetrahedral

To get a clearer view of the orientation of these models, try rotating them by dragging with the mouse.

A superb graphical approach using CHIME has been developed by John Nash at Purdue University for showing the spatial relationship of the different orbitals in different stereochemistries. (Look for the pages under orbital orientation.) Since the Gaussian surface files are very large, a local copy of these pages has been authorised for use by Mona students at our Intranet site.

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The Department of Chemistry, University of the West Indies,
Mona Campus, Kingston 7, Jamaica.
Created 1997. Links checked and/or last modified 25th January 2006.
URL http://wwwchem.uwimona.edu.jm/courses/CFTpt1.html