Dodecahedra Showing a Variety of Puckering

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Dodecahedron

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Octahedral hole

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Tetrahedral hole

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Cubic hole

In water, for all vertices, including puckered vertices, there will be the possibility of another link (hydrogen bond) along the radii going outwards. There are five, ten or twenty equivalent ways that these puckered dodecahedra can form for the cubic, tetrahedral and octahedral holes respectively. The figures show the maximum amount of puckering that occurs when the non-bonded distance between the inner molecules (the edges of the holes) is the same as the bonded distance between two neighbors. In practice a lesser degree of puckering is to be expected.

These animations use Jmol: an open-source Java viewer for chemical structures in 3D. Use the mouse for control.