Failure of The Theory
Part of the rationale for describing this as an effect was the fact that, at the time when it was proposed, there were no known compounds of Group 13 elements with the intermediate, +2, oxidation state. This is no longer true since the discovery of complexes of Ga(II) and In(II), such as the halo complexes 2-. These complex ions are stabilized by the formation of a covalent M–M bond. It follows that the instability of simple complexes of ions such as Ga2+ is due to kinetic factors, namely, that the Ga2+, having an unpaired electron, behaves as a free radical and is rapidly destroyed by reaction with another free radical. Drago was right, these compounds are thermodynamically stable by virtue of the formation of a covalent bond between the gallium ions.
Read more about this topic: Inert Pair Effect
Famous quotes containing the words failure of, failure and/or theory:
“It could be clearly proved that by a practical nullification [by the South] of the Fifteenth Amendment the Republicans have for several years been deprived of a majority in both the House and Senate. The failure of the South to faithfully observe the Fifteenth Amendment is the cause of the failure of all efforts towards complete pacification. It is on this hook that the bloody shirt now hangs.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to “feel good” about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)