Hyperconjugation can be used to rationalize a variety of chemical phenomena, including the anomeric effect, the gauche effect, the rotational barrier of ethane, the beta-silicon effect, the vibrational frequency of exocyclic carbonyl groups, and the relative stability of substituted carbocations and substituted carbon centred radicals, and the thermodynamic Zaitsev's rule for alkene stability.  More controversially, hyperconjugation is proposed by quantum mechanical modeling to be a better explanation for the preference of the staggered conformation rather than the old textbook notion of steric hindrance.