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For molecules with a closed electron shell, in which each molecular orbital is doubly occupied, the localized and delocalized orbital descriptions are in fact equivalent and represent the same physical state. It might seem, again using the example of water, that placing two electrons in the first bond and two other electrons in the second bond is not the same as having four electrons free to move over both bonds. However, in quantum mechanics all electrons are identical and cannot be distinguished as same or other. The total wavefunction

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