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I noticed that different books have a different sign convention for LFSE. The new editions of Miessler, Shriver and Housecroft uses the negative energy convention (- delta o + paring energy), while the older edition of Shriver and Huheey uses the positive energy convention (+ delta o - pairing energy).
I'm curious, how do you teach LFSE? the negative or positive convention?
Which one is a better approach to the LFSE? Do you know of a literature reference for this?
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I teach that LFSE is a negative value with pairing energy as positive. I used Shriver and Atkins one year, and I think they use the positive value for LFSE. My students nearly revolted. It was not pretty. So I've never tried that again. (Plus, the negative value for a stabilization energy makes more intuitive sense to me, as most stable states are lower in energy.)
That makes sense. I probably would just tell my students that some books have the positive convention, and some have the negative convention. That way, they know about it.
Thank you.