Orbital models made of plastic soda bottles

The models for demonstration of shape and direction of atomic and molecular orbitals, their overlaps, interactions, and hybridizations may be easily constructed from plastic soda bottles. For such models one may attach the screw caps to the faces of wooden or plastic tetrahedrons, trigonal prisms, or cubes (by screws, glue, wire). When the bottles are screwed into the lids, the models of sp3, sp2, or sp hybridized atoms are obtained. The orbital overlap leading to Iƒ bond formation is imitated by insertion of a smaller bottle into a larger one with the bottom cut off. Rubber or plastic rings put on pairs of "p orbitals" mimic pi bond formations.