# debye

## English

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### Etymology

Named after Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist Peter Debye.

### Noun

debye (plural debyes)

1. (physics) The CGS unit of electric dipole moment, defined as 1 D = 10-18 statcoulomb-centimetre and computable from the SI unit coulomb-metre by multiplying by the factor 3.33564 × 10-30.
• 1976, George Scatchard, Equilibrium in Solutions: Surface and Colloid Chemistry, Harvard University Press, page 197,
The dipole moments of water and the alcohols are about 1.8 debyes. The moments of ethers are smaller, about 1.2 debyes.
• 1997, J. R. Becker, Crude Oil Waxes, Emulsions, and Asphaltenes, PennWell Publishing Company, page 224,
There is considerable transfer of negative charge to the carbon atoms in the pyrrole ring, which give it a high dipole moment ≈ 1.8 Debyes.
• 2011, Humberto Soscún, Ab initio and DFT study of the static dipole (hyper)polarizabilities of benzaldehyde and thio-benzaldehyde molecules in gas phase, G. Maroulis, T. Bancewicz, B. Champagne, A. D. Buckingham (editors), Atomic and Molecular Nonlinear Optics: Theory, Experiment and Computation, IOS Press, page 468,
The corresponding results obtained here for ${\displaystyle \mu }$ of benzaldehyde range 1.298 Debyes — 1.471 Debyes, where the lower reported experimental value corresponds to the gas phase one of 1.263 Debyes, which is in good correspondence with the ${\displaystyle \mu }$ calculated at MP4 level (1.298 Debyes).

#### Usage notes

• Historically defined as the electric dipole moment resulting from two equal but opposite charges of absolute magnitude ${\displaystyle 10^{-10}}$ statcoulomb separated by 1 ångström.
• It is used much more frequently than the SI unit, being suited for measurements at the molecular scale relevant to chemistry and atomic physics. In contrast, the SI unit is inconveniently large.