Magnesium oxide Magnesium oxide Magnesium oxide (MgO), or magnesia, is a white hygroscopic solid mineral that occurs naturally as periclase and is a source of magnesium (see also oxide). It has an empirical formula of and consists of a lattice of Mg ions and O ions held together by ionic bonding. Magnesium hydroxide forms in the presence of water (MgO + HO → Mg(OH)), but it can be reversed by heating it to separate moisture. Magnesium oxide was historically known as magnesia alba (literally, the white mineral from magnesia – other sources give magnesia alba as MgCO), to differentiate it from "magnesia
Dihydrogen bond Dihydrogen bond In chemistry, a dihydrogen bond is a kind of hydrogen bond, an interaction between a metal hydride bond and an OH or NH group or other proton donor. With a van der Waals radius of 1.2 Å, hydrogen atoms do not usually approach other hydrogen atoms closer than 2.4 Å. Close approaches near 1.8 Å, are, however, characteristic of dihydrogen bonding. An early example of this phenomenon is credited to Brown and Heseltine. They observed intense absorptions in the IR bands at 3300 and 3210 cm for a solution of (CH)NHBH. The higher energy band is assigned to