02518 IUPAC Gold Book - freely rotating chain 10.1351/goldbook.F02518 F02518 current 1 A hypothetical linear chain molecule, free from short-range and long-range interactions, consisting of infinitely thin rectilinear segments (bonds) of fixed length, jointed at fixed bond angles; the torsion angles of the bonds can assume all values with equal probability. linear chain https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/L03546 probability https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/P04855 Purple Book, 1st ed., p. 50 (http://old.iupac.org/publications/books/author/metanomski.html) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/F02518/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/F02518/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/F02518/plain Citation: 'freely rotating chain' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.F02518 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-06-05T04:43:21+00:00