Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of or relating to a molecule or ion that has two or more atoms as constituents.
from The Century Dictionary.
- In chem., noting elements or radicals which have an equivalency greater than two; also, noting compounds having three or more hydroxyl groups, in which hydrogen is easily replaceable by other elements or radieals without otherwise changing the structure of the original compound: thus, glycerol is a polyatomic alcohol.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective obsolete, obsolete Having more than one atom in the molecule; consisting of several atoms.
- adjective obsolete Having a valence greater than one.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective chemistry (of a molecule or ion) consisting of
three or moreatoms
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective of or relating to a molecule made up of more than two atoms
Etymologies
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Examples
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Personally, I would call a polyatomic molecule only inelastic if its vibrations (or electrons) were excited, but as I say, this is debatable.
Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009
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Personally, I would call a polyatomic molecule only inelastic if its vibrations (or electrons) were excited, but as I say, this is debatable.
Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009
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Personally, I would call a polyatomic molecule only inelastic if its vibrations (or electrons) were excited, but as I say, this is debatable.
Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009
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Personally, I would call a polyatomic molecule only inelastic if its vibrations (or electrons) were excited, but as I say, this is debatable.
Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009
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Personally, I would call a polyatomic molecule only inelastic if its vibrations (or electrons) were excited, but as I say, this is debatable.
Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009
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Following up on chriscolose's response: in dense gases you get "collision-induced absorption" - a pair of molecules can absorb a photon while they are close enough to be exerting forces on each other you can think of the two colliding diatomic molecules as forming a very short lived polyatomic molecule.
Rabett Run EliRabett 2009
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Any polyatomic molecules of interest in combustion would completely decompose even at much lower temperatures.
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We also developed a means of producing fragments of polyatomic molecules (free radicals such as benzyl and methoxy) by directing a pulsed laser into a specially designed pulsed supersonic nozzle, and studying these cooled in the supersonic beam.
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The detailed physics of rotating polyatomic molecules with spin is extremely complex.
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Now we could study at least small polyatomic molecules with at the same penetrating level of detail previously attained only for atoms and diatomics.
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