Abstract
For a conjugated hydrocarbon possessing n carbon atoms and m carbon–carbon bonds McClelland showed that the expression (2mn)1/2 is an upper bound for the total π-electron energy (E). We now demonstrate that in the case of benzenoid hydrocarbons, g(2mn)1/2, g=(16/27)1/2= 0.77 is a lower bound for E. This explains the remarkable success of the McClelland approximation Ea(2mn)1/2, where a is an empirical parameter, found to be 0.908.
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