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Re: energy in the tank



Would somebody care to take a stab at giving
a _reason_ (you know, a physics reason) why
we must represent chemical-bond energy levels
as negative?

That's not what I said. I said "chemical bonds
store negative energy". For example, the bond joining two H atoms
into an H2 molecule stores -4.5 eV of energy. You can still
say that the total energy of the molecule is positive if
you like (and in fact, I would endorse this position because
the rest energy of the molecule is positive).

Dan