Symtriazine Flower

This flower-like structure is a graph that helps illustrate the energy of electrons in a molecule called sym-triazine.  The theoretical approach behind the graph is part of a larger effort that helped explain how sym-triazine can simultaneously break into three equal parts. 

Most molecules break apart one step at a time, so the phenomenon itself is rare. Researchers at the University of Southern California used a theoretical approach to chemistry to produce the graph, explaining the experimental results that emerged from research conducted by collaborators at the University of California, San Diego.  The researchers reported their findings in the Aug. 8, 2008, issue of the journal Science.

Credit: Vadim Mozhayskiy and Anna I. Krylov, Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California