Do chemists really understand chemical bonds?

Beta-carotene model from Wikipedia.

We chemists (and especially organic chemists) like to depict bonds using simple lines and, sometimes, some other more elaborate depictions like the "polytube" representation of beta-carotene shown above. Beta-carotene contains single bonds (C—C, C—H) and double bonds (C=C) all of which we can conveniently represent as lines thanks to Kekulé's depictions. But, as know from basic chemistry, and as we will continue discussing in class, there are many ways to represent a chemical bond. If at some point you feel that you are not understanding one of those ways well, feel at ease that the meaning of a chemical bond is still difficult to rigorously define even today. Read the blog post 'What is a bond?' by Philip Ball to see what I mean.

A physical organic chemistry blog

This blog is intended to be a medium to improve the communication and, hopefully, the learning of the students taking the QUIM 6411 course. I'll be posting announcements, homework, references and other material essential to the course, so, save the address for future reference.