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Violet phosphorus

I've made some new images of the crystal structure of violet P, as I could never visualise the 3D structure (how chains link together) from looking at the structure as typically presented.

I'll put them here in case anyone feels like expanding the text on the structure of violet P.

Ben (talk) 20:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

English version of the german image Phosphor Modifikationen.png

Placing this image was problematic in formatting.

White phosphorus and resulting allotropes

How come there is no octaphosphorus?

You'd think a cube-shaped P8 molecule would be more stable than a P4 tetrahedron, since unlike the tetrahedron, it would have no strain energy (the bond angles would be 90 degrees, which is exactly what one would expect for P-P single bonds in which there was no orbital hybridization).

Yet white phosphorus (which is one of the most easily obtainable forms), is unstable P4 rather than P8, and there is no mention of P8 in the article. Has anyone ever attempted to synthesize P8?

Maybe there is some other reason why the P8 molecule is unstable, but if so, I have no idea what that reason is. Stonemason89 (talk) 12:51, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of people have pondered this very question. And some alkylidyne-substituted derivatives have been reported, I think. Strain energy is a funny thing since interatomic vectors are not the same as bonds. --Smokefoot (talk) 13:35, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yellow/White and light exposure

White phosphorus is a transparent waxy solid that quickly becomes yellow when exposed to light

The picture seems to run counter to that statement, where the block is white on the outside, except for the corner of newly-exposed inside, which is yellow. From the photo I would have concluded that P₄ is normally yellow, but when exposed to light slowly turns white - or is there smoething else going on here? (You'll have a hard time convincing me that the inside of a block has been exposed to more light than the outside has.) Also, the white-to-yellow color change indicates that there is some structural/bonding change that's occurring - does anyone know what happens to cause the color change? -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 19:17, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know for sure but offer the following explanation: white phosphorus gradually converts to red phosphorus and thus appears yellow. The pictured sample is old and had this transformation (stimulated by heat and light) deep into the bulk, as revealed by the cut. Both white and red phosphorus do oxidize; the oxidation stops at the surface (because of extremely slow oxygen diffusion) and the oxide is white - this is what we see as a whitish tint in the picture. Materialscientist (talk) 03:59, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Red phosphorus

"Red phosphorus may be formed by heating white phosphorus to 250 °C" vs. "Red phosphorus can be converted to white phosphorus upon heating to 260 °C" aren't those statements kind of contradictory? Red converts to white by heating and white converts back to red by heating again? Something is missing or am I missing something? --Spmoura (talk) 16:55, 1 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I revised the second statement, although I assume that at some temperature the red allotrope would crack back into the white. --Smokefoot (talk) 12:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In the article "Allotropes of phosphorus", the heading "Hittorf's violet phosphorus" should be on the left margin.

@@ Line 41: / Line 41: @@
 "Red phosphorus may be formed by heating white phosphorus to 250 °C" vs. "Red phosphorus can be converted to white phosphorus upon heating to 260 °C" aren't those statements kind of contradictory? Red converts to white by heating and white converts back to red by heating again? Something is missing or am I missing something? --[[User:Spmoura|Spmoura]] ([[User talk:Spmoura|talk]]) 16:55, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
 :I revised the second statement, although I assume that at some temperature the red allotrope would crack back into the white. --[[User:Smokefoot|Smokefoot]] ([[User talk:Smokefoot|talk]]) 12:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
+In the article "Allotropes of phosphorus", the heading "Hittorf's violet phosphorus" should be on the left margin.